Sep 232025
 


Frans Hals Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer 1626

 

‘Absolute Miracle’ May Have Saved Lives During Charlie Kirk Murder (ET)
Bullet That Hit Charlie Kirk Purportedly Made No Exit Wound (HUSA)
Building a Legacy: Charlie Kirk’s Memorial (Salgado)
Moscow Ready To Respond To Any Threat – Putin (RT)
Putin Makes Nuclear Treaty Offer To US (RT)
Trump Declares Antifa a Terrorist Group (Catherine Salgado)
Biden’s FBI Tried to Entrap Trump’s Border Czar Before the Election (Margolis)
Why We Are at War (Richard C. Lyons)
Disney Gives Kimmel Show Back, But Nexstar & Sinclair Still Refuse To Air (ZH)
The Funniest Joke Jimmy Kimmel Never Told (Turley)
Trump Links Tylenol To Autism Risk During Pregnancy (RT)
Personal Note (James Howard Kunstler)
EU Looks To ‘Le Pen-Proof’ Its Budget – Politico (RT)
Macron Warns Against Seizing Frozen Russian Assets (RT)
Britain’s Fate Is Decline, Not Upheaval – And History Explains Why (Bordachev)

 

 

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1970169307867890068

https://twitter.com/Juliesnark1731/status/1970092182196642217

https://twitter.com/TheBritLad/status/1970047562565488823

https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/1970153374310945092

 

 

 

 

Hmmmm. “‘This would have taken a moose or two down, [or] an elk.’”

‘Absolute Miracle’ May Have Saved Lives During Charlie Kirk Murder (ET)

A spokesperson for Turning Point USA provided an update on the assassination of the group’s founder, Charlie Kirk, earlier in September and said Kirk’s body “stopped” the bullet from producing an exit wound. Citing a surgeon at the hospital that assisted Kirk, spokesman Andrew Kolvet wrote in a post on X that the bullet that killed Kirk on Sept. 10 at Utah Valley University “‘absolutely should have gone through, which is very very normal for a high powered, high velocity round.’ “‘I’ve seen wounds from this caliber many times and they always just go through everything,’” the surgeon said, according to Kolvet’s post. “‘This would have taken a moose or two down, [or] an elk.’” But the bullet “didn’t go through” because “Charlie’s body stopped it,” Kolvet said in the Sept. 20 post.

“I mentioned to his doctor that there were dozens of staff, students, and special guests standing directly behind Charlie on the other side of the tent,” he said. The doctor then told Kolvet, according to his post, that it “‘was an absolute miracle that someone else didn’t get killed’” by the bullet. According to the doctor, the shot “‘likely would have killed those standing behind [Kirk] too.’” “Even in death, Charlie managed to save the lives of those around him,” Kolvet wrote, noting that the doctor told him that the bullet had been recovered. It was discovered underneath Kirk’s skin. Officials have said the gun used in the shooting was a Mauser 98 model chambered in .30-06. According to prosecutors, the suspected assassin, Tyler Robinson, had told a male with whom he was in a romantic relationship that it was his grandfather’s gun. Authorities also said DNA on the trigger of the rifle that killed Kirk matched that of Robinson.

The authorities have released text messages said to be between Robinson and his romantic partner, whom prosecutors said identifies as a transgender female and was Robinson’s roommate. In these messages, Robinson allegedly said he plotted the attack for about a week and used a scope. Officials said Robinson had become “more political” in recent years, expressing more left-wing and pro-transgender views. When the roommate asked the suspect why he shot Kirk, according to the charging documents, Robinson said in response: “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.”Kirk had become a prominent force in politics and was credited with energizing the Republican base, particularly among youth, and helping President Donald Trump win back the White House in 2024.

Robinson’s roommate appeared shocked in the text exchange after the shooting, according to court documents, asking Robinson “why he did it and how long he’d been planning it.” While authorities say Robinson has not been cooperating with investigators, they say his family and friends have been talking to officials. Robinson made his first court appearance last week, with a judge declaring the suspect indigent and provisionally appointing a public defender. That public defender has not yet been named. The suspect faces capital aggravated murder, obstruction, witness tampering, and other charges. A capital murder charge means that Robinson could receive the death penalty. His next court date is set for Sept. 29. Robinson has not issued any public statements in response to the allegations.

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“Kolvet’s claims have been met with widespread skepticism online.”

Bullet That Hit Charlie Kirk Purportedly Made No Exit Wound (HUSA)

Call it a miracle—though many are calling bullshit. Andrew Kolvet, the executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” said Saturday that he spoke with the surgeon who worked on conservative activist Charlie Kirk at the hospital. According to Kolvet, the surgeon said the .30-caliber bullet that hit conservative activist Charlie Kirk made no exit wound because Kirk is “like the man of steel.” “He said the bullet ‘absolutely should have gone through, which is very very normal for a high powered, high velocity round. I’ve seen wounds from this caliber many times and they always just go through everything. This would have taken a moose or two down, an elk, etc.’ But it didn’t go through. Charlie’s body stopped it,” Kolvet said on Twitter/X.

The surgeon supposedly explained that “his bone was so healthy and the density was so so impressive that he’s like the man of steel. It should have just gone through and through. It likely would have killed those standing behind him too.” The coroner found the round just beneath Kirk’s skin, Kolvet added. By comparison, the .30-caliber round that Secret Service counter-sniper David King fired at alleged would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks made five wounds. According to the medical examiner who autopsied Crooks, he suffered five gunshot wounds—an entry wound, an exit wound, a re-entry wound, and “two corresponding, partial re-exit wounds.”

“There is a corresponding, partial gunshot re-exit wound on the lateral right upper back … There is an additional, corresponding partial gunshot re-exit wound on the lateral right upper back,” stated Crooks’s autopsy report, which was obtained exclusively by Headline USA. The bullet that hit Crooks came from a 300 Win Mag cartridge, which is more powerful than the .30-06 that allegedly was used in the Kirk assassination—but both have the same caliber bullet. Kolvet’s statement comes amidst public questions about what happened to the .30-06 round said to have slain Kirk. Ballistics experts have floated various theories about what really happened, speculating that Kirk may have been shot from somewhere else—possibly from his right side or even from below. Kolvet’s claims have been met with widespread skepticism online.

https://twitter.com/KitKlarenberg/status/1969707314618790326?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1969707314618790326%7Ctwgr%5E47736aecc70ef1bad7a6a7699346024dd87bba18%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fheadlineusa.com%2Fbullet-that-hit-charlie-kirk-purportedly-made-no-exit-wound%2F

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“‘Except a corn of wheat fall onto the ground and die, it abideth alone.”

Building a Legacy: Charlie Kirk’s Memorial (Salgado)

The most important officials in the United States, including the president, gathered to pay tribute to one man yesterday. Pastors glorified his faith, academics praised his intellect, and hundreds of thousands of people chanted his name. This man did not hold elected office. He was not a billionaire or an entertainer or a star athlete. He was a patriot who believed so strongly in free speech and the truth that he changed history. In a little over a decade, Charlie Kirk went from being a teenager with a lot of enthusiasm but no money or connections to becoming leader of a world-shaping movement, a man whom the most famous and powerful patriots of our era were proud to know. His loss to assassination was a grievous blow for America, which needed his talent and his vision for years to come. It was also a personal tragedy for his wife and little children.

But at only 31 years of age, Charlie Kirk left behind him a legacy much greater than that of many an octogenarian. As Donald Trump said, Charlie was “one of the giants of our nation,” a true “martyr for American freedom.” White House official Stephen Miller, speaking with intensity, declared, “The day Charlie died the angels wept, but their tears have turned to fire in our hearts.” He told Charlie’s enemies, “You have nothing, you are nothing, you are wickedness….You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk; you have made him immortal.” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth compared Kirk to St. Paul and described him as “a warrior for country, a warrior for [Christ],” in the best tradition of American courage. His fellow cabinet member, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said that Charlie Kirk, like Christ his Master, “changed the trajectory of history.

Charlie’s other overarching passion was free speech,” and “there’s a lot worse things than death and one of those is if we lost our constitutional rights in this country.” As the true warrior he was, Hegseth continued, “Charlie died with his boots on, and he died so that we did not have to undergo those fates worse than death.” Every speaker referred to the importance of faith for Kirk, from his pastor Rob McCoy to gospel singers to the president (read Chris Queen’s piece). As Kennedy said, “Charlie’s mission was Jesus Christ and also free speech.” Erika Kirk, before forgiving her husband’s murderer, said that “more than anything, Charlie wanted to do not his will but God’s will,” and “after Charlie’s assassination we didn’t see violence, we didn’t see rioting,” but “instead we saw what my husband always prayed we’d see in this country. We saw revival.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Charlie would want everyone watching or attending the memorial to believe we’re created by God, that we sinned and were redeemed, and that at the end of time all believers will have a great re-union, including with Charlie himself. Jack Posobiec, rosary in hand, urged attendees to put on the armor of God, “for Charlie.” Dr. Ben Carson read John 12:24 because Charlie was shot, he said, at 12:24 p.m. on Sept. 10: “‘Except a corn of wheat fall onto the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.’ And I want to thank Charlie for his sacrifice, because much fruit is going to be realized.” Kirk’s encouragement to young people to get married and raise families was also a recurring theme. Kirk’s Chief of Staff, Mikey McCoy, thanked Charlie for urging him to get married and helping him meet his wife, who stood beside him holding his arm.

While some ignorant, elitist leftists sneered at Kirk’s lack of a college degree, Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry Arnn lauded Kirk’s intellect and was proud to remember that Kirk had taken multiple online courses through Hillsdale. “I keep a list in my head of the 6 or 8 young people, and I’m very privileged, I get to know many inspiring young people who are the best I ever saw. Charlie is the only one who was never a full-time student at Hillsdale College who was on that list,” Arnn said, announcing an honorary degree for Kirk. Donald Trump Jr. said Kirk “was like a little brother to me,” but amid the heartbreaking tragedy, “we won’t be intimidated…Our message of faith, family, and country will not be silenced.” Don Jr. urged, “His legacy must be that when they took his life, a million more Charlies stepped up to fill the void. We are all Charlie!”

Vice President JD Vance, tears in his eyes, said of Kirk, “He changed the face of conservatism in our time and in doing so he changed the course of history….[Debate] was the vehicle for bringing the light of truth to dark places.” The most moving speech of the day was the eulogy by Mrs. Erika Kirk, who stood strong even as she wept, filled with love and forgiveness for friends and foes alike, describing the beauty of her marriage, the excruciating heartache of Charlie’s assassination, and her plans to carry on her husband’s vital work of free speech and outreach to young Americans.

Finally, Donald Trump paid tribute to the man he credits with ensuring his 2024 election victory. “Charlie’s murder was not just an attack on one man,” Trump stated, but on “our entire nation….The gun was pointed at him but the bullet was aimed at all of us.” Kirk changed history in his three decades of life on earth, Trump declared, before ending by calling Erika out on stage again to embrace her.

It was my great honor to attend the memorial of Charlie Kirk, a visionary and American hero. As someone only a few years younger than Kirk, his sudden death provokes a question in me as well as many of my fellow Gen Z and millennial Americans — what will my legacy be? Charlie Kirk was one in a billion. But while he was the indispensable man, he needed the staff, volunteers, fans, and friends who helped him make his movement a success. Now that he is gone, We the People are left to take up his banner, practice his courage, display his faith and patriotism, and prove to the bloodthirsty Democrats that we are all Charlie Kirk now.

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Trying to beat Russia amounts to suicide.

Moscow Ready To Respond To Any Threat – Putin (RT)

Russia is ready to respond to any threats, President Vladimir Putin has said, adding that Moscow still supports a diplomatic path to ease tensions despite the West’s destructive policies.Speaking ahead of the Security Council meeting on Monday, Putin sounded the alarm with regard to the “extreme danger of further deterioration” of the geopolitical situation, particularly amid the Ukraine conflict.= He added that while Russia had offered “specific ideas” to correct this trajectory, these “warnings and initiatives received no clear response.”There should be no doubt about this: Russia is capable of responding to any existing and newly emerging threats. Responding not with words, but through the application of military-technical measures, Putin warned.

He noted Moscow’s decision to abandon the unilateral moratorium on the deployment of ground-based intermediate- and shorter-range missiles last month, describing it as a forced step caused by the need to counter plans to deploy US- and other Western-made missiles in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Putin stressed, however, that Russia is not interested in warmongering and saber-rattling. “We are confident in the reliability and effectiveness of our national deterrent forces, but at the same time we are not interested in further escalating tensions or fueling an arms race.” He added that Russia has always prioritized “political and diplomatic methods for maintaining international peace, based on the principles of equality, indivisibility of security, and mutual consideration of interests.”

Putin signaled that Moscow is ready to prolong the 2010 New START Treaty, the last remaining arms control pact between Russia and the US, which expires in February. It limits each side to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and 700 deployed delivery systems, and provides for inspections and data exchanges to verify compliance. This initiative, Putin said, “could make a significant contribution to creating an atmosphere conducive to substantive strategic dialogue with the United States.”

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“The New START Treaty will expire on February 5, 2026, signaling the imminent end of the last international accord directly limiting nuclear missile capabilities.”

Putin Makes Nuclear Treaty Offer To US (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Moscow will continue to adhere to a key nuclear arms control treaty signed with the US for one year after its expiration, provided Washington agrees to do the same. Speaking ahead of a Security Council meeting on Monday, Putin said global strategic stability has been increasingly threatened by what he described as the destructive actions of Western nations. He stressed that while Moscow is ready to meet any threat, it is and always has been interested in political and diplomatic methods of resolving conflicts.

Russia is prepared to follow the 2010 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) treaty for one year after its expiration next February, provided the US reciprocates and refrains from actions that could break the nuclear status quo, such as deploying interceptor systems in space, Putin offered. The Russia-US treaty establishes limits on the numbers of intercontinental-range nuclear weapons both sides can deploy. Below is the full text of Putin’s speech, as published on the Kremlin website:

Good afternoon, colleagues,

We have several topics to discuss today, including matters related to migration policy. However, I would like to begin with an issue of prime importance, one that is critical to safeguarding our national interests, Russia’s sovereignty, and without exaggeration, international security as a whole. I am referring to the situation in the realm of strategic stability, which, regrettably, continues to deteriorate. This is driven by a combination of factors, which are negative, compounding existing strategic risks and generating new ones. As a result of the destructive actions previously taken by Western countries, the foundations of constructive relations and practical cooperation between nuclear powers have been significantly undermined.

The basis for dialogue within relevant bilateral and multilateral frameworks has been eroded. Gradually, the system of Soviet-American and Russian-American agreements on nuclear missile and strategic defense arms control – long relied upon to stabilize relations between the two largest nuclear powers and to enhance global security – has been nearly dismantled. Let me reiterate: We have repeatedly examined the causes and potential consequences of this situation. We attribute the numerous challenges that have accumulated in the strategic sphere since the beginning of the 21st century to the destructive actions of the West, their destabilizing doctrines and military-technical programs designed to undermine global parity and pursue absolute, overwhelming superiority.

We have consistently and thoroughly addressed these issues, criticized this approach, and not only highlighted the extreme dangers of further deterioration but also repeatedly proposed concrete ideas for joint solutions. However, our warnings and initiatives have not received a clear response. Let me emphasize and let there be no doubt: Russia is fully capable of responding to any current or emerging threat, not with words, but through concrete military-technical measures. A clear example is our decision to end the unilateral moratorium on the deployment of ground-based short- and intermediate-range missiles. This was a forced move needed for ensuring an adequate response to the deployment of similar US and other Western-made weapons in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, which poses a direct threat to Russia’s security.

Our plans to strengthen the country’s defense capability are being developed with full regard to the evolving international situation, and they are being implemented in a comprehensive and timely manner. We are confident in the reliability and effectiveness of our national deterrent forces. At the same time, we are not seeking to further escalate tensions or fuel an arms race. Russia has consistently upheld the primacy of political and diplomatic methods for maintaining global peace, based on the principles of equality, the indivisibility of security, and mutual respect for interests.

Let me remind you that the last major political and diplomatic achievement in the field of strategic stability was the conclusion of the Russian-American New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in 2010. However, owing to the profoundly hostile policies of the Biden administration, which undermined the fundamental principles on which this treaty was built, its full implementation was suspended in 2023. Nevertheless, both parties have declared their intention to continue voluntarily observing the central quantitative limits of the strategic offensive arms treaty until its expiry. For nearly 15 years, this agreement has played a constructive role in maintaining balance and predictability in the sphere of strategic offensive weapons.

The New START Treaty will expire on February 5, 2026, signaling the imminent end of the last international accord directly limiting nuclear missile capabilities. A complete renunciation of this treaty’s legacy would, from many points, be a grave and short-sighted mistake. It would also have adverse implications for the objectives of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In order to prevent the emergence of a new strategic arms race and to preserve an acceptable degree of predictability and restraint, we consider it reasonable to maintain at this turbulent time the status quo established under New START. Accordingly, Russia is prepared to continue observing the treaty’s central quantitative restrictions for one year after February 5, 2026.

Following that date, based on a careful assessment of the situation, we will make a definite decision on whether to uphold these voluntary self-limitations. We believe that this measure is only feasible if the United States acts in a similar spirit and refrains from steps that would undermine or disrupt the existing balance of deterrence. In this connection, I would like to ask the relevant agencies to maintain close oversight of American activities related to the START arsenal in the first place. Particular attention must be directed towards US plans to expand strategic components of its missile defense system, including preparations for the deployment of interceptors in outer space. We believe that the practical implementation of such destabilizing measures could nullify our efforts to maintain the status quo in the field of strategic offensive arms. We will respond appropriately in this case.

I believe that Russia’s initiative, if implemented, could make a substantial contribution to creating the conditions necessary for a substantive strategic dialogue with the United States – provided, of course, that the grounds for its full resumption are secured and that broader steps are taken to normalize bilateral relations and remove core security contradictions.

Let us now turn to the current agenda.

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“..a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.”

Trump Declares Antifa a Terrorist Group (Catherine Salgado)

President Donald Trump officially designated Antifa a domestic terror organization on Monday. In his Sept. 22 executive order, Trump defined Antifa as “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law. It uses illegal means to organize and execute a campaign of violence and terrorism nationwide to accomplish these goals.” Antifa became particularly infamous during the 2020 summer of love and the so-called “mostly peaceful” protests, and it remains a source of violence in the United States, with Portland just one city still enduring months of anti-ICE Antifa riots.

Antifa, as defined, Trump continued, “involves coordinated efforts to obstruct enforcement of Federal laws through armed standoffs with law enforcement, organized riots, violent assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement officers, and routine doxing of and other threats against political figures and activists.” It is obvious that the federal government needs to take action against Antifa, which follows in a very long tradition of Democrat domestic terrorism stretching back to the mid-19th century. The KKK’s power is almost entirely a matter of the past, and hopefully that will be said one day soon of Antifa.

The president explained further that “Antifa recruits, trains, and radicalizes young Americans to engage in this violence and suppression of political activity, then employs elaborate means and mechanisms to shield the identities of its operatives, conceal its funding sources and operations in an effort to frustrate law enforcement, and recruit additional members.” This enhances the threat, as does the fact that Antifa has ties to other political organizations. Therefore, since Antifa has made it obvious through the cities it has torched and the other crimes that its members have committed that it is a domestic terror organization, Trump officially announced:

Because of the aforementioned pattern of political violence designed to suppress lawful political activity and obstruct the rule of law, I hereby designate Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” All relevant executive departments and agencies shall utilize all applicable authorities to investigate, disrupt, and dismantle any and all illegal operations — especially those involving terrorist actions — conducted by Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support, including necessary investigatory and prosecutorial actions against those who fund such operations. The president previously expressed his intention not only of investigating Antifa and its funding sources further, but of designating other radical leftist organizations as domestic terror groups too.

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And these guys still work at the FBI?

Biden’s FBI Tried to Entrap Trump’s Border Czar Before the Election (Margolis)

Another day, another Biden scandal that the media desperately tries to dump on Trump. This time, MSNBC is working overtime to spin a damning story about Joe Biden’s FBI into yet another bogus hit piece on the Trump administration. Last year, while Biden and his minions were still calling the shots at the FBI, the bureau launched a brazen undercover operation targeting incoming Border Czar Tom Homan. Federal agents, posing as shady businessmen, tried to bait Homan with a $50,000 bribe in exchange for help securing contracts under a future Trump administration. It was a manufactured setup, designed from the start to entrap a Trump ally. The whole thing blew up in Biden’s face. When FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche reviewed the case, they immediately exposed it as a political hit job.

“This matter originated under the previous administration,” they said in a joint statement. “They found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.” Translation: Biden’s FBI wasted taxpayer dollars trying to entrap one of Trump’s top immigration advisors, and they failed. But instead of admitting Biden’s corruption, MSNBC twisted the story with a headline that made it sound like Trump’s DOJ covered up wrongdoing: “Tom Homan was investigated for accepting $50,000 from undercover FBI agents. Trump’s DOJ shut it down.” This isn’t journalism—it’s propaganda. Do you think it’s a mere coincidence that Biden’s team launched the sting while Homan was advising Trump’s 2024 campaign—knowing full well he would play a major role in Trump’s second term? They weren’t investigating a crime; they were trying to create one.

“Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you’re referring to. So you should get your facts straight, number one,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday during the White House daily press briefing. “Number two, this was another example of the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump’s strongest and most vocal supporters in the midst of a presidential campaign.” She added, “You had FBI agents going undercover to try and entrap one of the president’s top allies and supporters, someone who they knew very well would be taking a government position months later.” Leavitt continued, “They found zero evidence of illegal activity or criminal wrongdoing. And the White House and the president stand by Tom Homan 100% because he did absolutely nothing wrong, and he is a brave public servant who has done a phenomenal job in helping the president shut down the border.”

This is the Biden playbook: weaponize the Justice Department against political enemies. They tried it with Trump himself, dragging him through endless witch hunts. When that didn’t stop him, they moved on to targeting his inner circle. And when even that failed, the media stepped in to try and salvage the narrative. MSNBC’s shameless story proves the corporate media isn’t just biased—they’re active participants in political persecution. They took a story that completely vindicates Homan and twisted it into anti-Trump propaganda, counting on their audience to never read past the headline. The sad truth here is that Americans are being lied to by “journalists” who sold their souls to the Democrat Party.

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“..a Democratic Party that is diametrically opposed to the reconciling systems on which this nation was founded.”

Why We Are at War (Richard C. Lyons)

Polarity is in the nature of things, in fact, just as the poles of north and south exist, matter itself is drawn into being at opposites, as in the forces of magnets. So are we; we are social creatures of this world given to being at opposites. When our nation’s founders gathered in Philadelphia 238 summers ago, with the wealth of all of their collected libraries, they studied history’s opposed factions: from the Plains and Coastal parties of the Athenians, to the factions of Marius and Sulla in Rome, to the Byzantine parties of the Blue and the Green, to the Guelphs and Ghibellines of the Florentines, to the literary houses of Verona, the Montagues and Capulets, whose differences devoured the lives and loves of innocents. One of the great fears of that great intellectual company was that America would fall, broken by such opposing factions.

They deliberately wrote the Constitution, our social compact, to overcome such factions. Firstly, by creating a Constitution based on common law, with protections of individual and property that shield everyone against the ambitions of government, or any party thereof. The founders crafted a Constitutional Republic based first on federalism, which allowed people as varied in interests as a Boston lawyer and a Key West fisherman to live under distinct state and local laws best suited to themselves. Much of our Constitution has to do with voting into office, by a majority, those representatives freely chosen to represent the citizens’ interests. If anyone does not represent the citizens’ interests, they are as easily voted out, thus ensuring that governance is representative of the people’s will.

Our free enterprise system came into being with our nation; The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, was published in the same year as the Declaration of Independence; and the personal property rights espoused by John Locke were ensconced in our highest law in the 5th Amendment, among the Bill of Rights, including the “takings clause,” which forbids government from taking from an individual what they have earned by their labors and investments. Lastly, at the time of our nation’s founding, the Judeo-Christian ethic was omnipresent, with it’s Ten Commandments, the first common law of humanity, and its highest law: to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Each of these systems of law, of federalism, of representation, of free enterprise and of the ethos of Judeo-Christianity has helped reconcile our society as a whole and has been responsible for our nation’s peace and prosperity since the Constitution’s signing 237 years ago.

Who can argue with a common law that protects the wealthy and the poor? Who can argue about a system of diffused power, allowing localities and states to create their own laws? Who can argue with the right of people to empower those whom they would wish to represent them? Who can argue with the principle that the people who are entitled to wealth are those who have earned that wealth themselves? Who can argue with the notion that Judeo-Christianity is perhaps the best ethos for advancing peace through mutual respect, respect for the law, charitability, and humility? So why are we so opposed and at the point of war with one another in our nation today? Until November1963, both of our political parties, their patrons and, their constituents believed in every one of these societally reconciling systems. Then the momentum in the Democratic Party to more fully institute socialism began.

Today, the Democrats believe devoutly that the Constitution is a “living” document, which is to say, they can change or disregard whatever they don’t like in the text or kill it altogether as a document of “negative rights.” Today, the Democrats don’t believe in federalism; they desire all the wealth and power of the nation to be invested in one capital, Washington D.C., to be parceled out to family, friends and allies of their own. Today, Democrats do not believe in representative government; they believe in bureaucrats appointed for life to eternal agencies in the never constitutionally enumerated power of the Administrative State. Their only concern for the chambers of Congress is as a central exchange between the taxpayer and those agencies, which are the power base of the Democrat Party.

Today, Democrats do not believe in property rights; they believe that what is theirs is theirs and what is yours is theirs. They believe anyone who has earned wealth has done so illegitimately and those who haven’t have a superior moral right to it anyway, so long as the Democrats get an overall cut. Lastly, the Democrats’ idea of Judeo-Christianity is to pronounce publicly that they privately believe in it, while acting against it with every meaningful national vote they take and every regulatory rule they make. What is at opposition today is a conservative Republican Party that believes profoundly in the reconciling promise of these foundations of our society. And a Democratic Party that is diametrically opposed to the reconciling systems on which this nation was founded.

The Democratic Party has become what this nation fought against in the Second World War, the Cold War and the Middle Eastern wars. The Democrats — or the liberal left, progressives, or Democratic Socialists — have become a tyrannical bunch of bastards who have renounced their good parentage, and they are getting very violent about it. God Bless Charlie Kirk, who fought and died for all of these reconciling societal blessings.

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But you can still not watch it.

Disney Gives Kimmel Show Back, But Nexstar & Sinclair Still Refuse To Air (ZH)

Hours after 400 artists signed an ACLU letter in response to Jimmy Kimmel’s firing, the late-night host’s ‘indefinite termination’ for propaganda surrounding the Charlie Kirk assassination has been turned into a week’s vacation. According to Variety, Disney and ABC are bringing the comedian back to its schedule Tuesday night. “Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive,” the company said in a statement. “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”

Of note, none of the Nexstar or Sinclair affiliates will carry the show. Despite Kimmel’s return, it is not immediately clear if his show will be available across the entire country. Sinclair, for its part, had said that it would not go back to running Kimmel’s show on its stations until the late night host apologized for his comments, met with Sinclair representatives and made a donation to Turning Point, the organization that Kirk founded. Sinclair, it should be noted, owns the ABC station in the Washington, D.C., metro area, among other markets. Nexstar, similarly, could also choose to continue to preempt the show, though of course it would still be accessible online across the country after it runs on ABC. -Hollywood Reporter

Kimmel’s show was pulled last Wednesday after the host said that Charlie Kirk assassination suspect Tyler Robinson was ‘MAGA’ – when he’s very clearly not based on what we know. In response, FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened to revoke ABC affiliate licenses over the comments, which he described in a podcast interview with host Benny Johnson as “the sickest conduct possible.” As The Blaze’s Auron Macintyre opines: “ABC is putting Jimmy Kimmel back on the air because terrorism works in America.” Guess who predicted it? Does Roseanne Barr get her show back too now?

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“So Kimmel is now a hero of democracy — all he had to do was spread disinformation. That makes this the funniest joke that Kimmel never told.”

The Funniest Joke Jimmy Kimmel Never Told (Turley)

Democrats were finally outraged this week. No, it was not about the murder of Charlie Kirk, but rather the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night comedy show. Democratic leaders are taking to the airways to denounce the decision to take Kimmel off the air after he spread disinformation about Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer. The same leaders and pundits who have for years fought for censorship in the name of combating disinformation are now making the very arguments they ridiculed just months ago. Democrats once wrote letters to Internet carriers suggesting that Fox News, the most popular cable news network, should be taken off the air in the name of combating disinformation. That was when the Democrats controlled the White House and were targeting conservatives.

Suddenly, now, disinformation is no longer a valid reason to censor and alleged government-corporate alliances are a menace to free speech. After the tragedy in Utah, many on the left immediately tried to deflect responsibility for the murder by claiming that Kirk’s killer was actually a Trump supporter. On his show, Kimmel declared that “the MAGA Gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” The far-left motivations of the alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, were already well known. His family confirmed that he had been radicalized with leftist ideology and cited pro-transgender views. This was not even a joke — it was just a false factual claim made by Kimmel on national television. And it came at a time when others were spreading this lie.

Despite stories to the contrary, many repeated the false claim. For example, Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe posted that “Kirk’s apparent assassin seems to have been ultra-MAGA, exploding the GOP/MAGA attempt to pin the blame for this tragedy on liberals.” (Previously, Tribe had claimed that the October 2023 massacre of Israelis by Hamas was a “wag-the-dog” operation to distract from corruption allegations against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu). The disinformation took hold on the Internet and social media. One poll showed that a plurality of Americans think Robinson was a conservative. Call it assassination denial. It is all the rage. Former MSNBC and ESPN host Keith Olbermann wrote after Kimmel’s suspension, “Burn in hell, Sinclair. Alongside Charlie Kirk.” He added that “nothing [Kimmel] said was untrue.”

Curiously, some of these politicians and pundits are claiming that, yet again, democracy will die if Kimmel is not allowed to spread disinformation. There are reports that Kimmel was refusing to apologize and planned to double down on the attacks on conservatives in his next show. Faced with a revolt by affiliates and a potential exodus of advertisers, Disney’s head, Bob Iger, pulled the plug. (By the way, Kimmel’s ratings had been falling for years, and he had a smaller audience than the Colbert Show, which was itself discontinued due to loss of money). The hypocrisy was pure comedy. For years, these same voices demanded censorship of individuals deemed to be spreading disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation. The last category was used by the Biden administration to target statements “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

At the same time, they mocked claims that corporations were working with the government to maintain this censorship system. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) ran on a pledge to impose new criminal and civil penalties for anyone spreading disinformation. Now, however, censorship is intolerable. Warren told CNN “we know there was federal interference … We saw the government step up and give a hard shove and then we saw a compliant company turn around and suspend Mr. Kimmel.” She added that his collaboration with corporations “truly undermines the whole premise of the First Amendment.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) called the suspension one of “the most blatant attacks on the free press in American history.” Schiff had previously demanded that Twitter suspend an array of users and “reduce the visibility” of blacklisted individuals — including a journalist who held opposing views. When Elon Musk reduced censorship at X, it was Schiff who warned Facebook not to follow his example by restoring free speech protections. Schiff threatened legislative action if the company moved to “alter or roll back certain misinformation policies.” This week, Schiff is outraged by a company’s decision to suspend a host who refused to correct a false story he had spread.

For years, I appeared before these same leaders in Congress as they defended corporate censorship and dismissed allegations of collaboration with the government. I would not cancel Kimmel so long as his show was profitable. But I have long maintained that companies can limit the free speech of employees at work. I do not believe Kimmel should be censored on social media for spreading false information. At the same time, ABC does not have to lose money or viewers because an employee attacks others with vile, false claims. Now Disney is accused of killing democracy itself, in league with Trump. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) attacked Trump for “trying to destroy our democracy” and acting like “many would-be despots.”

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) used Kimmel’s suspension as evidence that “fascism is not on the way, it is here.” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) insisted that suspending a host for spreading false information about a murder was “North Korea-style stuff” while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) insisted that it is “what Putin would do.” It is a curious spin, since Putin and Kim Jong Un value media figures who spread false information — particularly about murders. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) went so far as to compare Kimmel to Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense and “Penman of the revolution.” So Kimmel is now a hero of democracy — all he had to do was spread disinformation. That makes this the funniest joke that Kimmel never told.

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It deactivates something?!

Trump Links Tylenol To Autism Risk During Pregnancy (RT)

US President Donald Trump has drawn a connection between the use of Tylenol during pregnancy and rising autism rates in America, calling the increase in diagnoses “one of the most alarming public health developments in history.”Speaking at a White House briefing alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday, Trump said pregnant women should avoid acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, unless absolutely necessary. He said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would begin updating warning labels and launch an information campaign aimed at pregnant women.

“Taking Tylenol is not good,” Trump said during the event. “They are strongly recommending that women limit Tylenol use during pregnancy unless medically necessary… If you can’t tough it out, if there’s a problem, you’re going to end up doing it, but ideally you don’t take it at all.”= Citing an increase in autism rates, Trump said the condition has become far more prevalent over the last two decades. “The meteoric rise in autism is among the most alarming public health developments in history,” he said. The FDA issued two separate news releases confirming a formal response to growing evidence of neurological risks linked to acetaminophen during pregnancy. The agency said it has initiated a label change for all acetaminophen-containing products, including Tylenol, to reflect studies suggesting an association with autism and ADHD.

“The FDA is taking action to make parents and doctors aware of a considerable body of evidence about potential risks associated with acetaminophen,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said. The FDA acknowledged that while some studies show an association between prenatal acetaminophen use and neurodevelopmental disorders, a causal link has not been established. It stressed that acetaminophen remains the only over-the-counter medication approved for fever relief during pregnancy and warned that alternatives like ibuprofen and aspirin can pose known risks to fetal development.

Tylenol manufacturer Kenvue responded to the developments by defending the drug’s safety. “We strongly disagree with any suggestion that acetaminophen causes autism,” the company said, warning that discouraging appropriate use during pregnancy may put mothers and infants at risk from untreated fever or pain. In another announcement, the FDA said it is initiating approval of leucovorin calcium tablets for patients with cerebral folate deficiency (CFD), a condition linked to developmental delays and autistic features. Though the agency cautioned that more studies are needed to assess the drug’s full efficacy in autism-related populations, it said the initiative reflects a broader strategy to repurpose existing medications for neurological conditions.

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“I’ve never talked to a Democrat who ever wanted to listen. They start to glitch out if you try.” — Sasha Stone

Personal Note (James Howard Kunstler)

This past summer, I tried to open a line of communication with a West Coast relative. We exchanged a few letters. I tactically steered the conversation away from the political. Here was the closer salvo from my relative:

Jimmy, on a completely personal level, and in different times, I think we could have been very good friends. At this point in our history, I find what you say in your blogs and Kunstlercast to be outrageous, deceptive, and ugly. I disagree with almost everything you hold dear politically, and even if, for instance, we agree about the horrors of Big Pharma, your worship of Kennedy makes me ill. Your language falls right into all the clichés of the far right ideologies I loathe.Maybe someday things will change. For now, this is the last you’ll be hearing from me.

Frankly, what stung most keenly was the accusation that my language fell “into all the clichés of the far right ideologies. . . .” I like to think that I am allergic to clichés, though it’s possible that I am deluded about that. If anything, the dynamic collective thought disorders of our time present themselves in astonishingly fresh ways — for instance, a Supreme Court nominee who can’t define what a woman is. (Makes you kind of wonder how such a mind could parse Article Two of the Constitution.)

Mostly, I would have liked to know what those “far right ideologies” are, exactly, but it looks like I will never find out now. Maybe it is being opposed to censorship. . . or against Ukraine’s entry into NATO. . . or wanting coherent procedure for foreigners seeking to enter the USA. . . or keeping biological men out of the women’s swim lanes. . . or saying that ivermectin is a safe and effective anti-viral med. . . or supposing that people charged with felonies should not be released to the streets without significant cash bail. Stuff like that.

As it happened, we were not discussing these matters in our brief correspondence, but I was at something of a disadvantage since I am a professional writer who posts his opinion for public scrutiny and my relative is not. Of course, I describe what is a pandemic of broken family relations in our country. And social relations. I have been cancelled by most of my old friends, too, and I’m quite sure that I am not a special case. I am mystified by what these relatives and old friends actually believe these days. When we were hippies back in the day, they were very much opposed to war, turned-off by attempts at censorship, and deeply averse to the dark operations of the CIA and FBI. Now, they seem avid for intel ops and hoaxes, eager for war, and all-in for censoring ideas that make them feel “unsafe.”

There are various useful theories for this state-of-affairs, all pretty cross-compatible. Strauss and Howe’s Fourth Turning template of generational cycles explains a lot. Elizabeth Nickson has some fine insights about the extreme discontents of women these days leading them to summon political demons. Mattias Desmet, the Belgian psych professor has his Mass Formation theory, which states that societal anxieties provoke aligned “radical intolerance” among a populace. I recommend Wendy Williamson’s recent blog discussion of The Law of Reversal. Joseph Tainter’s classic, The Collapse of Complex Societies lays out the pitfalls of our “over-investments in complexity.” I wrote a book in 2005 titled The Long Emergency which describes the drawn-out collapse of our techno-industrial economy — the widespread apprehension of which helps define the societal anxieties described by Dr. Desmet that bring on his “Mass Formation Psychosis.”

All these theories tend to imply an inflection point where our assumptions about human progress get undermined, provoking an intense loss of faith in institutions and authorities, resulting in epochal socio-political disorder. Wouldn’t you agree we are seeing exactly that now? That the net effect of all this is of a society driven insane. Surely, the craziness is amplified by the novel connectivities of the Internet and exacerbated by many other high-tech innovations from ubiquitous camera surveillance to cryptocurrency to drone warfare.

In our country these days, all of this has apparently produced two camps at war psychologically, now verging on something like a hot civil war. One camp calling itself “progressive” insists on a roster of ideas, policies, and practices that look patently absurd, abusive of the public interest, and hostile to the values of Western Civ. The other camp styles itself as “conservative” seeking to preserve Western Civ and the advancement of our so-called way of life — an ever growth-seeking high-tech economy.

Personally, I doubt that the latter is possible. I believe we’re due for a pretty serious time-out from the sort of economic “growth” we enjoyed the past two-hundred years. That high-tech mega-fiesta has thrown off a lot of entropy, which is now working hard to slow things down and make us stop a lot of what we are doing. It manifests in many ways, but most vividly by flinging us into social disorder, turning what had been communication and correspondence into a rising babel that is driving us crazy. That is exactly why it is so hard to talk to our relatives and old friends. But mark this: there is a time coming when we will get tired of being crazy, and then things will go differently for us. We’ll start talking again.

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“At the European Council in December 2026, there will be blood on the walls..”

EU Looks To ‘Le Pen-Proof’ Its Budget – Politico (RT)

The EU leadership is trying to fast-track talks to reach a deal on the bloc’s new budget before the French presidential election in April 2027, Politico reports. EU officials reportedly fear it could be won by right-wing firebrand Marine Le Pen or one of her allies from the National Rally party. The EU’s next seven-year budget is scheduled to come into force on January 1, 2028. The proposal by the European Commission currently being discussed amounts to €1,816 trillion ($2,136). It requires unanimous approval from all 27 member states to pass. The risk of the right-wing forces defeating French President Emmanuel Macron in the election is the main reason budget negotiations are being accelerated, the outlet said in an article on Monday, citing five officials and EU diplomats.

The concern in Brussels is that the National Rally’s platform, which includes slashing Paris’ contribution to the EU budget and reducing military aid to Ukraine, could disrupt the already complex talks, it said. Le Pen has been banned from running for public office after a French court found her guilty of embezzling European Parliament funds earlier this year. She has challenged the ruling. The National Rally’s second most prominent figure, Jordan Bardella, is also believed to be capable of winning the election, according to the article. European Council President Antonio Costa is working to secure a budget deal in the council by the end of 2026, his spokesperson, Maria Tomasik, told journalists on Friday.

“At the European Council in December 2026, there will be blood on the walls,” a senior EU diplomat told Politico, referring to the negotiations. There is “annoyance” over attempts to speed up the budget talks in countries including Italy and Poland, which argue that it leaves them less time to make changes to the proposal and benefits the Northern European nations, according to the outlet. A poll by Ifop published on Saturday suggested that Macron’s ratings have fallen to 17%, the lowest during his two-term presidency. Hundreds of thousands protested across France last week against government policies, including additional austerity measures proposed by newly appointed Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu.

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Word from your banker.

“Ignoring international law would lead to “the beginning of total chaos,” the French president has said..”

Macron Warns Against Seizing Frozen Russian Assets (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron has pushed back against the idea of seizing frozen Russian assets, warning that doing so could backfire on the West and undermine global stability. In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation aired on Sunday, Macron was asked about what the West was planning to do with the $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets which were frozen after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. “We are all very much attached to being compliant with international rules. You cannot seize these assets from the central bank, even in such a situation,” the French leader said, describing it as “a matter of credibility.”

“When some countries start to disrespect international laws… this is the beginning of a total chaos. So we will respect international law. We are predictable, and we will not do all impossible things with these frozen assets,” he added, recalling that Kiev’s Western backers are already using proceeds from the frozen assets to prop up Ukraine. Throughout the conflict, Western policymakers have considered seizing Russian assets – most of which fall under EU jurisdiction – but have so far refrained due to the lack of a legal basis and fears it would damage global trust.

Last year, however, G7 nations supported a $50 billion loan to Ukraine secured by the income from Russian reserves. Western nations have also directly handed over to Kiev approximately $4.3 billion in proceeds from Russian assets. This month, the EU Commission floated a proposal to use Russian assets to back a reparation loan to Ukraine, which Kiev would be obligated to repay only if it receives “compensation” for damages from Moscow. Russia has denounced both the freeze and the profit-transfer scheme as “theft,” warning that confiscation would damage the global financial system and trigger retaliation from Moscow.

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“Protests in London will change nothing – Britain’s people were bred to endure..”

Britain’s Fate Is Decline, Not Upheaval – And History Explains Why (Bordachev)

The demonstrations in London earlier this month – up to 150,000 people protesting immigration and government incompetence – drew attention in Russia and abroad. Some observers even wondered if Britain might finally be approaching a breaking point. Perhaps, like Nepal or France in past years, mass anger could reshape politics. But such hopes are misplaced. Britain will never experience revolutionary upheaval. Its culture is not one of defiance but of endurance. The United Kingdom has, over centuries, become a bastion of injustice disguised as stability, where ordinary people are conditioned to accept their powerlessness. This cultural inheritance, once an imperial advantage, now guarantees slow decline.

Britain is unique in Western Europe: it was created not through union or invitation, but through conquest. In 1066 Norman knights crushed the native English and divided the land into fiefdoms. Unlike Russia, where foreign warriors were invited to defend the realm, or Hungary, where nomads fused with locals to form a people, England’s story was one of subjugation. That pattern hardened in 1215, when barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta. Propaganda later elevated the charter as the foundation of English liberty. In reality it entrenched oligarchy: the power of the wealthy over crown and people alike. Where monarchs elsewhere often stood with peasants against feudal tyranny, in England the crown itself was shackled by landowners. Injustice became not an aberration but the system’s operating principle.

Geography reinforced the pattern. For centuries there was no frontier of freedom. Only in 1620 did dissenters finally flee on the Mayflower, planting English settlements in North America. By then, 600 years of endurance had shaped a national character: patient, fatalistic, and resigned. In Russia, by contrast, peasants had begun migrating east as early as the 11th century. Freedom was found in movement: new villages, new lands, and eventually a new people. This restless expansion created Russia’s unique statehood and ethnic identity. The English, trapped on their island, cultivated instead a tradition of enduring injustice. By the 18th century, Britain was sending its sons to wars around the world. They returned crippled, if at all – as Rudyard Kipling later immortalized. Yet they went meekly. A society drilled in obedience did not question orders, however insane. That made Britain dangerous abroad, but docile at home.

Popular uprisings were crushed without hesitation. Laws such as the Settlement Act of 1662, tying workers to their parishes, or the Poor Law of 1834, abolishing basic relief, stripped away rights. Only after 1945, under pressure from the USSR’s example, did Britain adopt limited welfare protections. Even these are now eroding, with no real resistance. This tradition once gave Britain its edge. Armies could be raised, colonies conquered, wars fought with little domestic dissent. But in the modern world, where political vitality depends on public will, the same habit of resignation has become a liability. Unlike Russians, who carved out freedom by settling new lands, or French and Germans, who rebelled and migrated, the English learned to endure. Their legacy is a society where injustice is not challenged but accepted – and where any hope of transformation evaporates before it begins.

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statin

 

 

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Sep 222025
 


 

Trump Praises Charlie Kirk: The ‘Martyr for American Freedom’ (Salgado)
The Band Is Back Together: Trump and Musk Reunite at Kirk Memorial (Margolis)
President Trump Asked if Truth Social Post Was Critical of Pam Bondi (CTH)
Rep. Crockett Slams ‘Caucasian’ Dems For Honoring ‘Racist’ Kirk (VF)
Great Tribulation Volcanos, Earthquakes & Tsunamis – Steve Quayle (USAW)
Kremlin Comments On State of Putin-Trump Relationship (RT)
Brussels Bureaucrats Are Running Around Like Panicked Chickens – Orban (RT)
Great Britain Recognizes Palestinian Statehood (TASS)
Antifa Is A Very Real And Organized Terror Threat (ZH)
Far-Left Protesters Will Not Be Satisfied Until France Collapses (ZH)

 

 


https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1969905443741802745

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/1969903262955663756

 

 

President Trump’s Cabinet Remembers and Honors Charlie Kirk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And oh, that’s right: not one single instance of violence. Nothing at all.

I tried to watch it all yesterday. That was a long trek. Gospelrock -if that’s what it’s called- starts working on my patience after mere seconds. And all those speakers. Only two were interesting: Erika Kirk, because she’s who she is, and Donald Trump, because he’s so good at it, he’s a natural. Noticed also how safe Erika feels in Trump’s arms. None of the other speakers are really speakers. Much of that may be unlearning things, not learning.

Trump Praises Kirk: The ‘Martyr for American Freedom’ (Catherine Salgado)

On Sunday, President Donald Trump delivered a powerful eulogy to “our greatest evangelist,” a man to whom we owe a “profound and eternal debt of gratitude now,” Charlie Kirk. America is now “a nation in grief, a nation in shock,” Trump began, because it “was robbed of one of the giants of our nation.” Trump declared that “none of us will forget Charlie Kirk, and neither now will history.” Charlie Kirk, Trump continued, “was violently killed because he spoke for reason and for justice,” and “he argued brilliantly without apology.” The president described the work and legacy of a man he dubbed a true “martyr for American freedom.” Trump promised that “his voice on earth will echo through the generations,” and thanked Charlie’s widow Erika, promising to work for her and her children to create “a land where there father is honored and revered as a great American hero.”

He spoke directly to Charlie’s parents and described how Charlie went from being a teen with no money or connections to the leader of a history-shaping movement in a little over a decade. As Trump stated, Charlie “in his 31 years [did] than most people…can bring in a lifetime.” And as Kirk loved America, so “America loved Charlie Kirk.” Trump praised the faith of the crowd, labeling it “like an old time revival.” And while “it is agonizing and unthinkable to say goodbye to a patriot whose heart still had so much to give,” Trump said, we must carry on his work. For instance, Trump recalled that one of Charlie’s last messages was, “Please sir, save Chicago,” which Trump aims to do. “Inspired by faith and his love of freedom Charlie did something remarkable,” he “devoted his life to converting young people to the conservative cause,” and “the young man from Illinois whom no one had ever heard of started an organization” that launched him to international fame.

In the early days, Charlie wouldn’t accept a paycheck and wore Goodwill clothes, working around the clock, as “he was always in it for the mission.” Trump described Charlie as “actually a master builder, a master builder of people…it was Charlie who stood up for persecuted Jews and Christians,” who fought censorship, who “helped unite MAGA” and created the union of Robert F. Kennedy’s health movement with MAGA. When Trump makes an important health announcement, he “will be missing [Charlie] tomorrow.” Charlie also urged Trump to take notice of JD Vance. The president remembered with fondness how Charlie would call him up at night during the election campaign and ask, “Do you think you can come speak at the event [tomorrow]?” Trump said he would usually object, then often agree, because “you never wanted to let Charlie down, he worked so hard” and “he made me feel guilty…he always gave more than he took.”

Not only that, but “no one was too small for him to notice,” and Kirk even agreed to appear on a fourth grader’s podcast! Kirk worked tirelessly; “he did this until his dying breath.” Trump said that when Kirk was assassinated, he ordered some very important people out of the Oval Office to focus on Charlie. TPUSA under Trump’s leadership became “a juggernaut of American politics,” and “Charlie didn’t just bring young people into the movement,” he delivered a historic number of young votes for Trump in 2024. Even the day he was assassinated, when warned that Utah Valley University had hostile students and staff, Kirk declared, “I want to know them and love them.” This made him “a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose.” With a flash of humor, Trump admitted, “that’s where I disagree with Charlie, I hate my opponent.”

But “the more success Charlie had,” Trump said, “the more dangerous his mission became.” Leftist violence is a growing threat, which Trump plans to address. Charlie “knew the risks,” but he was determined to go on without fear, and “he was winning, and he was winning big, he was taking over college campuses….They lied about him because they did not want you to listen to him…. He won the hearts, he won the minds, and yes, he won the elections.” The 2024 GOP election victory was Charlie Kirk’s win. Trump remembered how when the results came through, Charlie “was overcome with emotion…his eyes were filled with tears,” and he put his face in his hands until his beloved Erika ran to give him a hat. Charlie “had a tremendous heart,” and when he finally looked up on Election Day he said, “I am humbled by God’s grace.”

Trump urged everyone to think how twisted must be the “soul of a man who would kill a man like Charlie,” so charitable and good. “Charlie’s murder was not just an attack on one man,” the president said, but on “our entire nation…The gun was pointed at him but the bullet was aimed at all of us.” Yet Charlie is bigger than ever and “the depraved assassin who” killed Charlie, “God willing, he will receive the full and ultimate punishment.” Trump marveled at the hypocrisy of people who claim preferred pronouns are morally necessary but “were filled with glee at the murder of a young father.” Democrat rhetoric is to blame. “If speech is violence, some are bound to conclude that violence is [the response] to speech,” he cautioned. In spite of all the violence, our liberties are “among the most treasured achievements of civilization, and we will carry forward the torch of liberty that Charlie Kirk held,” working for “a spiritual reawakening,” because “without borders, law and order, and religion you really don’t have a country anymore.” So “we want God back.”

The marvel was that “within minutes of the gunshot in Utah millions of Americans young and old dropped to their knees” to pray for Charlie, Trump said. While Charlie died, “those prayers for a miracle have already been answered…his legacy has touched so many millions around the world,” as we have seen. Therefore, Trump said, “you should never underestimate what one man can do with …a righteous spirit” and “the will to fight, fight, fight.” While Charlie Kirk “started with only an idea,” Trump added, he ended up “changing history.” So “we grieve for the friend and leader that we have lost but we go forward …[to] defend the country he fought for.” And as Trump stood with his arms around Erika Kirk, facing that stadium, one could not doubt that he will try to carry on the legacy that Charlie Kirk left to him. May the same be said of us.

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Inevitable. They really like each other.

“..in June, Kirk predicted they would find their way back. “I actually think they’re going to reconcile at some point, though, because, deep down, I would like to believe they both want the same thing..”

The Band Is Back Together: Trump and Musk Reunite at Kirk Memorial (Margolis)

Charlie Kirk knew that if conservatives were going to stop the radical left, unity was non-negotiable. He often warned that America’s survival depended on it. And on Sunday, his words rang truer than ever. At his memorial service in Arizona, Kirk’s prediction that Donald Trump and Elon Musk would reconcile came to life as the two shook hands—a moment that felt like history bending to prove him right. There was Trump, sitting behind bulletproof glass in his presidential box, when Musk approached and extended his hand. The brief exchange captured by lip readers revealed something beautifully human: “It’s good to talk,” Trump said, according the lip reader who spoke with the Daily Mail, with Musk responding “very much so.” Then came the kicker—Trump’s admission that “I’ve missed you” as he squeezed Musk’s hand before the Tesla CEO quickly departed.

Eric Trump’s Instagram post said it all: “the band is back together!” The younger Trump understood what many observers missed — this wasn’t just political theater. This was two men who’d let their egos get in the way of a shared mission to save America, finally remembering what really mattered.Trump and Musk’s feud blew up in June over Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” and for a while, it looked irreparable. “Elon’s upset because we took the EV mandate,” Trump said at the time, calling the original subsidy a billion-dollar handout to Tesla and other EV makers. Trump insisted Musk knew every detail of the bill all along and only started complaining once the gravy train was derailed. “He knew everything about it… better than almost anybody,” Trump said. “He never had a problem until right after he left.”

Things got even uglier on Truth Social, where Trump accused Musk of going “CRAZY!” over the subsidy cuts and admitted he had grown tired of the Tesla CEO’s behavior. Then came the real bombshell: Trump threatened to terminate Musk’s federal contracts. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” he wrote, taking an unmistakable jab at Biden for not doing it sooner. At the time, hopes of reconciliation seemed dead. Trump told reporters he had no desire to patch things up, leaving conservatives worried that a powerful and promising alliance had collapsed. “If [Musk] and the President are in some blood feud… most importantly, it’s going to be bad for the country,” Vice President JD Vance warned. “But I don’t think it’s going to be good for either of them.”

Charlie Kirk, though, saw what most missed. Even as the titans traded barbs in June, Kirk predicted they would find their way back. “I actually think they’re going to reconcile at some point, though, because, deep down, I would like to believe they both want the same thing,” he said. Kirk understood something crucial—shared purpose always outweighs wounded pride. So, I think Kirk would have loved seeing Trump and Musk bury the hatchet at his memorial service. He believed in the power of unity among conservatives, understanding that petty squabbles only strengthen the left. And maybe, just maybe, this is a sign that their alliance—the one so many of us have been waiting for—is finally on the path to restoration.

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“As long as Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is safe and in solid position, Pam Bondi is safe and in solid position.”

President Trump Asked if Truth Social Post Was Critical of Pam Bondi (CTH)

My analytical and historic opinion of Pam Bondi is well known. CTH previously faced anger and scorn from those who disagreed. However, from CTH long-term perspective, Bondi was/is a political animal lacking intellectual acumen and carrying outlooks subject to popular political perspectives. She was over her head from day one, but Susie Wiles liked her former colleague a lot. As U.S. Attorney General Bondi does not have the ability to independently strategize against the Lawfare system that has corrupted Main Justice and U.S. politics. That said, from the position of protecting President Trump from attacks Bondi is effective, and thus criticism of her inabilities should be tempered. Last night, President Trump posted on Truth Social that the clock was ticking and no accountability has yet been delivered against those who weaponized government power structures against himself and the American people. Shortly thereafter, President Trump was asked about his criticisms of Bondi. WATCH:

President Trump’s social media post: “Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, “same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.” Then we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past. A Woke RINO, who was never going to do his job. That’s why two of the worst Dem Senators PUSHED him so hard. He even lied to the media and said he quit, and that we had no case. No, I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot. We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT“

One hour later, President Trump posted this:

As noted in the original post, “nothing is being done” because, well, nothing is being done. Apparently, President Trump is receiving information from those in/around his orbit who are increasingly hearing the frustrated voices of his supporters. However, simultaneously the value of AG Pam Bondi lies in her primary skillset of keeping President Trump protected from political and lawfare attacks. As previously noted by The Associated Press: […] Bondi worked as a lobbyist for Ballard Partners, the powerful Florida-based firm where Trump’s campaign chief and incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles was a partner. Her U.S. clients have included General Motors, the commissioner of Major League Baseball and a Christian anti-human-trafficking advocacy group.

As long as Chief of Staff Susie Wiles is safe and in solid position, Pam Bondi is safe and in solid position. Susie Wiles is the filter that controls information that reaches President Trump. Susie Wiles controls the people, subjects, inputs and information who reach the Oval Office. If President Trump is unaware of an issue, it’s entirely because Susie Wiles keeps that issue away from President Trump. If President Trump is advocating a specific position with strong determination, it’s because that position is very important to Susie Wiles. That’s the reality of the dynamic. According to Susie Wiles she was “asked by a mutual friend” to travel to New York and meet with candidate Trump in “late December 2015.” That timeline would be post-Fox Debate (Megyn Kelly attempted hit – Aug ’15) when President Trump was leading every republican primary poll and became the enemy of the professional Republican establishment.

That mutual friend was likely well-known lobbyist and friend of President Trump, Brian Ballard. Susie Wiles was a “partner” at Ballard Partners. Both Susie Wiles and Pam Bondi connect to President Trump personally and professionally through Brian Ballard. 2018 – “Ballard, like most of Florida’s Republican establishment, backed Jeb Bush in the primary, but when Trump called he offered to do what he could for his client. In September, as it became clear that Trump’s lead in the polls wasn’t going away, Ballard dispatched Wiles to New York to meet with Trump. Wiles was named the Trump campaign’s Florida co-chairwoman a few weeks later.” Susie Wiles was also the advocate behind Mike Waltz being selected as the first National Security Advisor. We said at the time of the announcement that NSA Waltz would fail and likely be the first to exit; he did and was.

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“..the Congresswoman calling President Donald Trump an “enemy to the United States” and comparing him to Hitler..”

Rep. Crockett Slams ‘Caucasian’ Dems For Honoring ‘Racist’ Kirk (VF)

Rep. Jasmine Crockett is now claiming that Charlie Kirk’s “rhetoric” was racist…and not only did she vote against the House resolution to honor him, she’s furious that MORE Democrats didn’t do the same. She’s now openly attacking the “Caucasians” in her own party who supported the resolution. What a sick and vile human being. “One of the things I do want to point out that’s not been laid out, that honestly hurts my heart, is when I saw the no votes, there were only two caucasians.” “For the most part, the only people that voted no were people of color.” “Because the rhetoric that Charlie Kirk continuously put out, there was rhetoric that specifically targeted people of color.” “And so it is unfortunate that even our colleagues could not see how harmful his rhetoric was specifically to us.”

“And I can tell you that a month prior to him passing away, he had actually gotten out on his podcast, I wasn’t aware of this at the time, but he got out there and he was talking negatively about me directly.” “So if there was any way that I was going to honor somebody who decided that they were just going to negatively talk about me and proclaim that I was somehow involved in the great white replacement, yeah, I’m not honoring that kind of stuff.”“So to me, just like we wanted to make sure that those confederate relics were taken down, the idea of a new age relic being propped up was something that I just could not subscribe to, and it is unfortunate that more of my colleagues, even on my side of the aisle, could not see the the amount of harm that this man was attempting to inflict upon our communities.” Disgraceful.

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1969765432753107045

Scott Jennings just came out swinging in response to Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s vile comments about Charlie Kirk. He said what no one else on CNN seems willing to admit…after the network gave her a platform to smear a man who hasn’t even been buried yet. “To say that he was continuously targeting people of color is nothing but a malicious smear, on the very day that people are remembering Charlie, and he’s going to be laid to rest.” “And so I think when you combine the no votes on the resolution and then you look at the leading Democratic voices like Ilhan Omar and Jasmine Crockett, who’ve gone out to smear Charlie before he’s even had his funeral.” “When I hear people say, we need to come together and both sides need to turn down the rhetoric, you know, a lot of the people saying that need to look inward right now.”

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1969814757503852911

But, Crockett was far from done. After CNN anchor Dana Bash on Sunday played clips of the Congresswoman calling President Donald Trump an “enemy to the United States” and comparing him to Hitler, the Texas Democrat doubled down. Bash asked Crockett on “State of the Union” if she had “a responsibility” to cool down her rhetoric, but she said she did not and that the president was using Hitler’s “playbook.” “I think that my responsibility is to be transparent and to be honest. And the reality is that we are living in a time in which this administration and this regime is not interested in making sure that people understand history,” Crockett said. “We need to understand why they are so problematic.” “So I am using that language because it is accurate language,” she continued, saying Trump’s policies are “a playbook out of Hitler and I won’t deny it! Like, these are the facts.” Speech may be free, but it has its costs!!

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“It’s not they are going to drag us in, they have drug us in.”

Great Tribulation Volcanos, Earthquakes & Tsunamis – Steve Quayle (USAW)

Renowned radio host, filmmaker, book author and archeological dig expert Steve Quayle is back warning about intensifying earthquakes, volcanos and tsunamis all over the world that governments and media are covering up. Add this to the political violence, possible financial breakdown, multiple wars intensifying at the same time, battles over catastrophic climate destroying geoengineering in Congress and you are witnessing a time like the world has never seen before. This is starting to look like what Jesus was talking about in Matthew 24:21 when he said, “For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will again.” Let’s start with the increasing numbers of volcanos becoming active such as the world-famous Mt. Kilauea in Hawaii shooting molten lava 500 feet into the air happening now.

Quayle says, “The Kilauea volcano on the big island of Hawaii has record lava plumes going off. Fountains is a more correct term. In the last week to 10 days, and this affects what is going on in Hawaii, we have watched the Kamchatka Peninsula with an 8.8 earthquake. Then we watched a 7.7, but what is not being talked about is the ring of fire with the volcanic activity with a ring around the Pacific Ocean. . .. I want people to understand the volcanos, earthquakes and tsunamis effect everything and everyone.” Quayle has been predicting a huge quake coming in the Pacific Northwest for a few years now, and he also points out the Hilina Slope in Hawaii could set off “a 500-foot-tall tsunami that could destroy the west coast of America.” Quayle says, “These are the mega events that are happening all over the world. There are earthquakes taking place on Mount Rainier.

I am watching the quakes taking place on Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helens. . .. People have to recognize, and this is an easy call, that our lives are going to change dramatically. . .. This will affect the whole country in terms of food and transportation, and it will also affect power throughout the electrical grid.” Quayle says his sources are telling him that we are close to a mega financial event. This is similar to what financial expert Ed Dowd said on USAW recently. What’s going to happen in the markets? Quayle says, “50% down and a cascading amount of failure in everything from banking to housing, emergency proclamations and even to the point of martial law. That is going to take place because the Blue states are getting ready to go to war with the Red states.”

Some people are hoping the US will stay out of the NATO war shaping up with Russia over Ukraine. Quayle says the US will get pulled in and says, “It’s not they are going to drag us in, they have drug us in. You can’t say you want peace with Russia and then send weapons to Ukraine. . .. You don’t steal $300 billion from Russia; that is what the West has done . . . and used it to buy weapons to make war on them.” Gold hit a record high on Friday, and silver is at levels not seen in years. Quayle says, “There is 750 ounces of fake paper gold for every ounce of real physical gold. . .. Whales, mega liquid investors, when they decide to go into the gold and silver markets, they can buy all deliverable gold in under three hours. . .. When you want your gold in hand, there will be no delivery. This is not a scare tactic. It’s the reality of what is going on behind the scenes.”

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“..adding that Trump’s “emotional” attitude toward the peace process is “completely understandable.”

Kremlin Comments On State of Putin-Trump Relationship (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin “values the constructive relations” he has with his US counterpart Donald Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, adding that both leaders want the Ukraine conflict to move toward a peaceful resolution. In an interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin aired on Sunday, Peskov said Putin appreciates that the two leaders can “openly discuss the most urgent and sensitive issues.” He added: “Putin, like President Trump, remains interested and open to bringing the entire Ukrainian crisis into the path of a peaceful settlement,” noting that Moscow will “keep working to feel out an opportunity” for continued diplomacy. “We count on the US and President Trump personally to make efforts to help in this matter. We’ll see what comes of it,” Peskov said.

The spokesman also weighed in on Trump’s recent visit to the UK, which has been one of Ukraine’s most stalwart supporters. “The United Kingdom is one of the leaders of this pro-war camp,” he said, adding that Trump “was probably told a lot about their plans to keep putting pressure on Russia,” including by using sanctions. Since taking office, Trump has made repeated attempts to mediate the Ukraine conflict, initiating numerous rounds of talks with Russian officials, which culminated in a summit with Putin in Alaska in mid-August. While no breakthrough was achieved, both sides described the talks as productive.

Since then, Trump has signaled a shift from pressing for an immediate ceasefire to seeking a permanent settlement. He said Ukraine cannot hope to join NATO or reclaim Crimea, which voted to join Russia in 2014 after a Western-backed coup in Kiev. On Friday, Trump suggested that Putin had “let me down” over the lack of progress in settling the conflict. Responding to those remarks, Peskov said Moscow assumes that the US leader maintains the “political will and intention” to pursue a settlement, adding that Trump’s “emotional” attitude toward the peace process is “completely understandable.”

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“Europe, as we knew and loved it, is over,” Orban warned. “If we deny this, we lose time. If we say it out loud, we gain time.”

Brussels Bureaucrats Are Running Around Like Panicked Chickens – Orban (RT)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has slammed Brussels, accusing the EU leadership of mismanaging key areas such as the economy, immigration, and security.In a critical speech at Digital Civic Circles, a network of digital groups promoting conservative values in Hungary, he claimed the bloc was on the brink of collapse due to the failures of its current leaders. The prime minister painted a stark picture of “mountains of debt, crowds of migrants, street violence, the increasingly dark shadow of war, mass layoffs, skyrocketing utility costs, impoverished households, and Brussels bureaucrats running around like panicked chickens,” on Saturday while describing the EU’s troubles.

According to Orban, the EU has fallen short of establishing itself as a credible global power. Instead of rising to meet these challenges, the bloc has become a symbol of weakness, indecision, and internal chaos, he said. He criticized what he called the “tragic” trade deal with the US signed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, adding that the EU’s green policies are “killing European industry.” Energy prices, Orban noted, are “three to four times higher” than in the US, while countries like France are edging toward unsustainable debt levels. “Europe, as we knew and loved it, is over,” Orban warned. “If we deny this, we lose time. If we say it out loud, we gain time.”

The politician contrasted Budapest’s own approach with that of Brussels, pointing to stricter migration controls, a family policy tied to employment, and a tax system that, he said, supports jobseekers. Orban’s criticism, while sharply worded, taps into broader concerns which have been echoed by economists and analysts. Experts from the International Monetary Fund and other institutions have warned that the EU risks long-term stagnation. The IMF projects euro-area growth at just 0.8% in 2025 and 1.2% in 2026, while public debt remains near 90% of GDP and deficits continue to exceed 3%, well above pre-pandemic levels.

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UK, Australia, Canada, and now Portugal.

Great Britain Recognizes Palestinian Statehood (TASS)

London has recognized the state of Palestine, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced. “Today, to revive the hope of peace for the Palestinians and Israelis, and a two state solution, the United Kingdom formally recognizes the State of Palestine,” he said in a video address broadcast on the X social network. The British premier announced the decision in a video message on Sunday afternoon at the same time that Canada and Australia also recognized Palestinian statehood. He said: “Let’s be frank. Hamas is a brutal terror organization. Our call for a genuine two-state solution is the exact opposite of their hateful vision. We are clear this solution is not a reward for Hamas, because it means Hamas can have no future, no role in government, no role in security.”

On September 19, in an open letter, the US Republican Party threatened allied countries with response measures should they recognize Palestine as an independent state. The letter was addressed to Australia, the UK, Canada and France, among others. Tensions erupted again in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, when militants from the Gaza-based Palestinian movement Hamas launched a surprise incursion into Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip, killing residents of border settlements and seizing hostages. In response, Israel initiated a military operation in the enclave to dismantle Hamas’ military and political structure and rescue all those kidnapped.

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“The end game, though, is always the same. Burn the west to the ground. Burn free markets to the ground.”

Antifa Is A Very Real And Organized Terror Threat (ZH)

In the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination as well as the confirmation that alleged killer Tyler Robinson is a far-left ideologue and gay man living with a transgender partner, the public’s attention has once again turned to the issue of Antifa, an activist network that shares many similar political beliefs with the shooter. Federal authorities are currently investigating the Discord sever groups used by Robinson in the lead up to the attack to find any potential co-conspirators. Discord has been identified as a common forum used by Antifa for organizing members for specific events while pretending as if their protests are random and “grassroots”. In the meantime, the corporate media is once again running interference for Antifa, claiming that the group is nothing more than a gaggle of disconnected people without no affiliation other than they “agree to oppose fascists”.

Of course, simply declaring yourself the “good guys” does not necessarily make it so. The Antifa of pre-war and post-war Europe used a similar tactic, claiming that they were a loose collection of concerned citizens seeking to fight fascism and participate in civil discourse. In reality, they were being directly funded by the Soviet Union and their ultimate goal was the downfall of the western world to make way for a communist “Utopia”. One expert on Antifa, Andy Ngo, says that the claim that Antifa is nothing more than a disorganized protest ideal is a lie. He notes that the decentralized cell structure of Antifa is similar to structures used by Islamic terror groups. Ngo is deeply acquainted with the operations of Antifa; he has tracked hundreds of violent incidents involving member of the group over the years. He was also attacked and nearly killed by a mob of Antifa activists in Portland, Oregon after they recognized him in the street.

Portland authorities failed to arrest and prosecute the attackers despite some of them being identified on video footage. In a subsequent civil trial, Antifa intimidated the jury into returning a verdict which favored the assailants. Andy Ngo and many other investigators into Antifa activities note that the group enjoys a number of protections, including legal protections and funding for operations. Financial aid comes from crowdfunding pages, but also from NGOs and even government agencies feeding cash into adjacent activism groups. This helps to explain why Antifa protesters often have the same signs, the same tents, the same riot shields, access to safe houses, etc. Many activists travel from outside of the locations that they protest in, which means funding for gas, food, lodging, etc.

Considering the average full-time protester isn’t able to maintain a job to pay for these excursions, the money has to come from somewhere. NGOs and state government funds are the primary sources. Antifa and related leftist groups exploit various civil and political conflicts, hijack these causes and then use them as a means to further their own goals. Recent examples include the mass deportation debate and the protests over Gaza. It’s important to understand that leftist militants do not necessarily care about immigrants or Palestinians, they only see their “plight” as a useful tool for radicalizing activists into using violent tactics.

The problems of the world become the justifications for Antifa terror, melding gay, trans, migrant and Islamic grievances under a single communist umbrella. The end game, though, is always the same. Burn the west to the ground. Burn free markets to the ground. Destroy as many conservatives and nationalists as possible in the process until there is no one left to oppose them.

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Antifa in Europe too.

Far-Left Protesters Will Not Be Satisfied Until France Collapses (ZH)

Paris is crippled this week by constant protests designed to throttle traffic and shit down basic services, and the majority of the mob is comprised of far left activists including Antifa. The Paris actions are coupled with nationwide demonstrations that saw sporadic clashes with police who fired volleys of tear gas. Activists argue that eight years of leadership by France’s “business-friendly president” Emmanuel Macron have benefited too few people and hurt too many. The protests ignited in response to austerity measures issued by the struggling government, including cuts to socialist programs and an increase in the national retirement age.

Macron’s opponents complain that taxpayer-funded public services – free schools and public hospitals, subsidized health care, unemployment benefits and other safety nets that are cherished in France – are being eroded. France has crawled from one crisis to another since he dissolved parliament in 2024, triggering a legislative election that stacked Parliament’s lower house with critics of the president. Left-wing parties and their supporters want higher taxes for the wealthy and businesses to pay more to help rein in France’s debts, rather than see public spending cuts that they contend will hit low-paid and middle-class workers. France’s national debt was reported at $3.6 trillion US by the end of 2024, growing by nearly $1 trillion since 2023. This is over 100% of the country’s annual GDP.

Placards at the Paris demonstration read: “Tax the rich.” However, similar taxation efforts have been tried across the EU and in the UK, causing companies and business owners to simply close up shop and leave. In 2024, the UK lost 25% of its billionaires and 16,500 millionaires due to increasing taxation. This has led to a black hole effect in the economy, with an acceleration in job losses and slowing investment. The current tax rate for top earners in France is 45% of income over €180,471 ($211,000). High-income earners also face additional surtaxes and social charges that significantly increase the total tax rate. As is common in any country or US state that targets high earners with socialist tax measures, the people with the money walk away and go where they are better appreciated.

Leftists protesters indicate that they are not interested in fair taxation, but rather, wealth redistribution. Activists argue that French President Emmanuel Macron is “far right wing” and compared him to Donald Trump while espousing a laundry list of communist demands. Macron is a previous member of the socialist party now described as a “centrist liberal”. He has angered leftists with his shift to center and his increasing support for border controls. In other words, being “centrist” is “far right wing” in the minds of Antifa activists. The riots seem to be motivated more by typical Antifa goals, including the “Free Palestine” movement and the destruction of “nationalism”.

France’s conservative and anti-mass immigration movements have been growing exponentially along with similar movements across Europe. Leftists may be trying to flex their numbers as a way to frighten political leaders from seeking to appease these movements with tighter borders and fiscal responsibility. Ultimately, Antifa activists want a the collapse of the current government and a reformation. What the reformation would look like is hard to say, given that many of the protesters don’t seem to know. Of course, if the Bolshevik campaigns of the early 20th Century are any indication, then the end game will not be pleasant for the vast majority of people.

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Nobivac
https://twitter.com/NicHulscher/status/1969794022572208586

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in wartime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 192025
 


Caspar David Friedrich The Monk by the Sea c1809

 

Prove Charlie Right (David DesRosiers)
TPUSA Names Charlie Kirk’s Widow Erika as New CEO (Salgado)
Chris Cuomo Schools the Left on Kimmel’s Suspension (Margolis)
Jimmy Kimmel Missed This Clue About Trump; It Was His Downfall (Tim O’Brien)
Kimmel Has No One to Blame but Himself for Cancellation by ABC (Perrotta)
Trump to Antifa: IT’S GOING DOWN (Victoria Taft)
Brigitte Macron To Prove To US Court She’s A Woman (NYP)
Macron Is In A Political Death Spiral (Amar)
‘Not The Right Time’ To Call For Russia-Ukraine Ceasefire – Trump (RT)
Trump Files Emergency Request With SCOTUS To Make Lisa Cook Fired Again (ZH)
RFK Jr. Cannot Proceed With Overhaul of Health Agencies, Court Rules (ET)
The ‘Golden Billion’ Has Lost Its Crown (Bobrov)
Bank of Russia Governor Dismisses Talk Of Recession (RT)
Great Moments In The History Of Chrystia Freeland’s Failure (Helmer)
China To Test Arctic Express Route To Europe (RT)

 

 

https://twitter.com/TONYxTWO/status/1968488772468650199

Benny

 

 

 

 

The Charlie tragedy enters day 10 today.

Prove Charlie Right (David DesRosiers)

On Sept. 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk was assassinated for the political sin of showing up on college campuses across our country and taking and answering questions. These queries came from students and guests whether they were allies or adversaries – or simply curious-minded Americans engaging in their unalienable birthright to engage in civics openly. Charlie Kirk was martyred for the free exercise of his First Amendment rights. And the right to free speech, which he championed, was critically wounded in the attack. The aftermath marks a turning point in our nation’s “house divided” future. Let’s do as Charlie did masterfully and probe the mindset of the other – in this case his assassin’s and that of his like-minded enablers. It was Charlie’s way. It is the Socratic way. It is the Western Civ, the American way.

Who will rid us of this meddlesome apostle of free expression? Progressives don’t like to think of themselves as King Henry, the man who uttered the fateful words that caused four loyalists to murder Thomas Becket. But where else can their constant denunciations of Republicans as “Nazis” or “fascists” lead? A young man, who was being groomed to be a moral monster by our culture and the passions it unleashes, heard the dog whistle call to arms, seized the opportunity of a public event in his home state, and did what was collectively seen by his ilk as necessary and proper. To do so, he suspended morality, the rule of law, and human decency in order serve what he and too many others see as a higher political purpose. Sadly, this moral madness is what is taught in our nation’s colleges. This is the ethic that guided the global left – paired now with America’s identitarian vanguard –to fundamentally remake America.

Their immoral reasoning not only led to the killing of Charlie Kirk, but it is also the rationale of messianic monsters through the ages. In the 20th century alone, under the guise of National Socialism and global communism, it led to the murder of a hundred million souls. Social media has given it another Great Leap Forward. It is the justification for the show trials, the guillotine, the oven, the suicide vest, and the lone sniper. This assassin’s creed is not for everyone. Only a few have the wherewithal to take this beyond-good-and-evil step. But those who do take things to their evil conclusion do so knowing that those with less nerve but shared adjacency on the ends will find in their partisan hearts that what they did was needed and therefore good, if not praiseworthy.

This is the recipe for political madness and incompatible with our venerable experiment in self-government that we must now defend in common. What does Charlie Kirk’s assassination portend for our country? I see the potential of a natural turning point towards the good, the restoration of the First Amendment’s spirit, and a return of political, civic, cultural, religious, and economic toleration. That would be a big rainbow following a storm. So far, there has been little call for retaliatory violence. So much for the “Hitler Youth” handwringing. There have only been completely peaceful prayer vigils. Unlike this assassin’s creed and its enablers, Charlie Kirk’s soul and mind would not allow such a demonic transvaluation of value. His true followers share that moral position. On this point, the partisan calls for moral equivalence don’t hold.

The good news for us, the living, is that Charlie is being honored in death by his followers in a way that gives us all a new political lease on life. I first heard of his shooting from my 28-year-old son and 18-year-old nephew. They saw Charlie’s execution with their own eyes within moments of it happening and captured the core un-American inhumanity of it all. “A man is gunned down for the thought crime of debating on a college campus.” “This guy is a family man,” they said. “He has a wife and two young children.” What happens going forward? Charlie’s influence was huge before he was shot. It appears to be growing by the day in death. I hope something good is happening in real time. I believe you can see, hear, and feel it.

It turns out that when a public figure with 35 million followers gets assassinated for the whole world to see for simply speaking on a college campus, those who never heard of him – or heard something, good or bad – will naturally check it out themselves. A national re-examination may be happening. The curious are finding an immediate and growing corpus, which is deconstructing the demonic caricature made of him, and are standing up for this smart, fast-talking, civil, happy man in the prime of this life. Charlie’s wife Erika gave a speech full of love and principle that brought tears to those with open hearts. This organization Charlie dedicated half of his life to is not going anywhere but onward and upward. Since his assassination, Turning Point USA has received tens of thousands of applications to set up TPP college chapters.

College Mandarins in charge of green-lighting or gaslighting student organizations and regulating speech to their Orwellian liking should tread lightly going forward. The Justice Department will be watching. Charlie is dead but not gone. His happy warrior spirit and first-rate mind are already immortalized in the cloud. TPP should enlist the help of AI to give Charlie’s mind and his “Prove Me Wrong” method a second lease on life for our collective sake. To the legion of young people whose hearts are broken and want to do more, you know that Charlie would want you to follow in his footsteps. The time for being a spectator was canceled with an assassin’s bullet. Today, it is time to stand up, show up, and be like Charlie. You know his mind and his method. From heaven, Charlie is saying to all those who love him, “Prove Me Right.”

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“We have a country to save.”

TPUSA Names Charlie Kirk’s Widow Erika as New CEO (Salgado)

Turning Point USA lost its beloved CEO and founder, Charlie Kirk, to an assassination last week. Who better to take his place than his widow, Erika? Erika Kirk not only lost a friend and inspirational leader but also her much-loved husband last Wednesday. Now she has to raise their children alone. But she is not cowed by the horrific leftist violence that took her husband’s life, and she will be taking his place as the CEO and chairwoman of the board at TPUSA.= During her heartbreaking but inspiring comments after Charlie’s death, Erika declared, “You have no idea the fire that you have ignited within this wife. The cries of this widow will echo around the world like a battle cry. To everyone listening tonight across America, the movement my husband built will not die.” She is more committed than ever to his life’s work.

In the X post announcing Mrs. Kirk’s new position, TPUSA’s Board explained that Charlie had told multiple executives within the organization that, if he should die prematurely, he would want his wife to take over his job. The TPUSA Board voted accordingly for her yesterday, on Constitution Day. The statement from TPUSA began by citing Ecclesiastes in the Bible and expressing faith in God, just as Charlie always did: In Ecclesiastes, King Solomon wrote that mankind is to be tested by God. Today we are facing such a test, yet we also know that God has prepared us with everything we need to overcome this ordeal. It was the honor of our lives to serve as board members at Charlie’s side. Charlie prepared all of us for a moment like this one. He worked tirelessly to ensure Turning Point USA was built to survive even the greatest tests. And now, it is our great pride to announce Erika Kirk as the new CEO and Chair of the Board for Turning Point USA.

Charlie said he wanted his legacy to be his faith. And he wanted to inspire a whole generation of young patriots to carry on his work. The outpouring of love for him, not just in America but around the world, highlights his great success. The TPUSA board emphasized that every member of the organization has “a special role in carrying Charlie Kirk’s mantle and completing his vision of bringing us all closer to our Lord and fostering a prosperous country for generations to come.” It quoted Charlie’s famous saying, “We have a country to save.” Notably, just before his death, Charlie expressed a goal of putting a TPUSA “Club America” chapter at every high school in the country (somewhere around 25,000). Since Charlie’s assassination, TPUSA has had 37,000+ applications for new chapters.

Therefore, the Board affirmed: We will not surrender or kneel before evil. We will carry on. The attempt to destroy Charlie’s work will become our chance to make it more powerful and enduring than ever before. May God Bless Erika, the Kirk family, and the entire team at Turning Point USA. As Erika Kirk very truly said to her husband’s murderer, “You have no idea what you have just unleashed across this entire country and this world.”

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If Kimmel had been a big hit, he would never have been cancelled. Nothing to do with Trump.

Chris Cuomo Schools the Left on Kimmel’s Suspension (Margolis)

Chris Cuomo just dropped a dose of inconvenient truth about Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, and it’s not what the left wants to hear. Instead of feeding the narrative that this was some grand assault on free speech, Cuomo cut through the noise—and his blunt take won’t sit well with leftists desperate to turn Kimmel into a martyr. Cuomo began by stripping the drama down to the essentials: “You can like or not like Disney’s decision on Kimmel.” He then explained the obvious point the media refuses to entertain: absent evidence of state interference, this is a brand protecting itself. “But until I see proof of actual government coercion of their decision, this is about Disney making a business decision about its brand and the responsibility it has to respect the desires of its audience and its license.”

Throughout, Cuomo refused to barter facts for feelings. “I don’t care how you feel about it,” he said, adding bluntly, “We don’t have the proof before us. Maybe we will, then I’ll change my analysis.” In other words: show me the evidence or stop pretending the First Amendment has been violated. After the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk, the facts quickly confirmed what many already suspected: his killer was a radicalized leftist. Yet on his show, Jimmy Kimmel mocked the truth, sneering, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

https://twitter.com/JasonJournoDC/status/1968833785513828511

That wasn’t just inaccurate—it was blatant propaganda, and it crossed a legal line. Under 47 CFR § 73.1217, better known as the FCC’s “broadcast hoaxes” rule, television networks and radio stations are strictly prohibited from airing false information about crimes or catastrophes when they know it isn’t true. And it simply wasn’t and there was no excuse for anyone at ABC not to know that. Cuomo reiterated the point that should shut down every hysterical hot take on the left: the First Amendment limits government action, not private companies. “And no, it is not a First Amendment issue until you have proof of government intervention because the First Amendment doesn’t apply to private industry in this context. It’s a restriction on government regulation. Okay?”

That’s the core of Cuomo’s point. The idea that a network’s license hinges on personal loyalty to a president—or that Disney somehow lost its autonomy because of political pressure—is the stuff of tabloid headlines, not court-ready proof. “The basis of having a license is not on whether or not you are good to Trump. Okay?” Cuomo said, cutting through the noise. That suspicion is precisely why he insists on proof. And right now, the left has none.

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“And she reassured the president, because as his friend, she knew he may have needed this reassuring, that Charlie knew the president loved him, too. This is powerful because anyone who knows how men actually think knows that there is a good chance this was on the president’s mind..”

Jimmy Kimmel Missed This Clue About Trump; It Was His Downfall (Tim O’Brien)

If you didn’t know that Jimmy Kimmel has been suspended from his nightly gig producing a propaganda broadcast in front of a live audience, you’ll be forgiven for actually having a life. But for those of us who’ve been inundated with online reports of how this is bad or good for Western civilization, our forensic investigation continues. My colleague Stephen Kruiser put it all in perspective in The Morning Briefing today. And if gloating is your thing, you have to read about Roseanne Barr’s epic reaction, courtesy of Matt Margolis. Going by the headlines, the major reason Kimmel now has more time on his hands is that, when he inserted the Charlie Kirk assassination into his “comedy” monologue, he spread the myth that the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, was MAGA.

This has raised the question of whether comedians should be held to the same standards for truth and accuracy as journalists. While it’s one thing to debate how far-reaching the government should be in policing speech, it’s certainly within the purview of Disney, the owner of Kimmel’s show, to make the prudent decision to take him off the air if he’s spreading a dishonest narrative that adds to the current culture of toxicity. A culture that many blame for Charlie’s assassination. But there was another part to Kimmel’s monologue that demonstrated just how out-of-touch he has become and why his humor so consistently misses the mark.

He set up his joke by saying, “On a human level, you can see how hard the president is taking this.” And then he played a clip of President Trump taking impromptu questions from a scrum of White House reporters. One off-camera reporter offered the president his condolences and asked him how he was holding up. The president in DJT style answered by deflecting and pivoting in less than a second. “I think very good, and by the way right there you see all the trucks. They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House,” the president said as he proceeded to change the subject. Kimmel’s punchline then is that Trump is at the fourth stage of grieving, “construction.” He then went on to frame the president’s approach to grieving as that of how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.

OK, we all know it’s a joke, and a bad one, and timing-wise, a very insensitive one. But it also shows just how clueless Kimmel is when it comes to how real men deal with personal loss and grief. Kimmel, who’s surrounded by Hollywood types who revel in their identities of victimhood, doesn’t get real men, which is why he doesn’t get Trump. Trump is among the richest people in the world, and yet he does not afford himself the luxury of showing off his vulnerabilities to the world. He grew up on movies where John Wayne and Clint Eastwood presented the classic male archetype. Fortitude in the face of danger, death, and tragedy. In all of these stories, the hero is not distracted by all of the madness around him. He stays cool and focused, and he serves as a solid guidepost for those around him.

The current, more fashionable term for this is stoicism. Trump came up in the construction industry. It’s always been a man’s world, populated by no small number of tough and unsavory characters. To deal with all of the interests he’s had to deal with over the years, and to change skylines, he’s learned not to show weakness. Now in his second term as president, he knows the world is watching his every move. The Middle East is watching. Europe is watching. Vladimir Putin is watching. Xi Jinping is watching. The last thing Trump wants to show them is a crack in his armor. In terms of his public persona, Trump is easy to understand. He almost never takes off his tie or suit, and when he does, he’s on the golf course. When he talks in public, he’s rarely introspective.

For those who’ve met him, it’s always about you when he talks. He wants to talk about you. When he talks to the press, it’s almost always about the thing he’s trying to get done, or the people who stand in his way. One of his skills is to break this up often enough to entertain, and he does that by bragging a little (or a lot) and by praising or taking shots at famous people. He never uses the media to serve as his therapist, as so many celebrities do. This approach to compartmentalizing personal feelings is not unique to Trump. Most men are this way in some fashion, especially men of his generation. But Kimmel has lost sight of that, and that’s why he couldn’t comprehend why the President of the United States wouldn’t vomit his vulnerabilities to the press corps on demand.

Last Friday night, when Erika Kirk gave her address to the nation, one of the most touching parts of an extremely touching speech was when she looked into the camera and spoke directly to Charlie’s friend, President Trump. She told the president that Charlie loved him. And she reassured the president, because as his friend, she knew he may have needed this reassuring, that Charlie knew the president loved him, too. This is powerful because anyone who knows how men actually think knows that there is a good chance this was on the president’s mind. Just don’t expect him to talk about such a personal and intimate thing in public. It’s ironic that Kimmel’s breakout venture into entertainment was a show about men called “The Man Show,” and in 2025, the one thing Kimmel doesn’t have a clue about is men.

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“(A decision made easier by the fact Kimmel’s audience is down to about 12 leftists and whatever tourists and homeless he can drag off Hollywood Boulevard into his studio.)”

Kimmel Has No One to Blame but Himself for Cancellation by ABC (Perrotta)

Jimmy Kimmel has been yanked faster than a pitcher who gave up five home runs in a row … and spit on the bat boy. The longtime late-night host who self-identifies as a comedian was pulled off the air “indefinitely” by ABC/Disney after making a horrific slur against the “MAGA gang” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Specifically, despite mountains of public evidence that the suspect held in connection with Kirk’s killing is an antifa-echoing, trans-loving, MAGA-loathing leftist, Kimmel declared in somber tones Monday night: “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

He lied to his audience. Period. He explicitly pinned the killing on supporters of President Donald Trump. Period. This was not a poor attempt at a joke. At this point, Kimmel wouldn’t know a joke from a jukebox. This was not a live, on-the-air slip-up. (Like ABC News reporter Matt Gutman gushing about the “very touching” nature of accused gunman Tyler Robinson’s texts to his live-in transitioning lover.) This was a deliberate, scripted, placed on the cue-cards, vicious character assassination against a grieving segment of the population. It would be like Johnny Carson after James Earl Ray’s arrest for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination going on “The Tonight Show” and saying, “The Negroes are acting like a white man did this to hide that it was a brother, just so they can get more welfare.”

It was outrageous, and decent people agree: “No more.” As conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly posted on the social media platform X: “But what the Left doesn’t seem to understand and needs to hear is that MAGA has f****** HAD IT. We are ANGRY. We are INCENSED watching the [Left] smear us, our [people], literally getting some of our friends killed (not to mention our president shot and nearly assassinated again weeks later) and then LYING about it. (‘Trump faked his injury! He wasn’t actually shot!’ ‘We have no idea what the motives ever are … if they are bad for our side!’)” Two major TV-station owners of ABC affiliates, Sinclair and Nexstar, also had enough. ABC/Disney finally had it as well. (A decision made easier by the fact Kimmel’s audience is down to about 12 leftists and whatever tourists and homeless he can drag off Hollywood Boulevard into his studio.)

Faux Outrage
Naturally, Democrats and some in the liberal media are gnashing their teeth over Kimmel’s cancellation. As are those dozen Kimmel viewers. Daily Signal Executive Editor Rob Bluey laid out five of the most egregious examples, from Sen. Chris Murphy to CNN’s Van Jones. Too bad the Emmys were last Sunday night. These performances would have swept the awards. Even Barack Obama, the nation’s Divider Emeritus, weighed in. They’re the worst breed of hypocrites. As Bluey noted, these sudden champions of free speech were perfectly happy to sit on their pampered rear ends while the Biden administration launched an all-out war on conservative voices. And Obama? He’s the one who unleashed the rabid dogs of the IRS to maul the Tea Party movement to death. On this, he should on Mount Shushmore.

It’s not just that they’re hypocrites. They’re gaslighters. Again, they’re talking about the oppressive Trump regime (read “fascists”) stamping out dissent, the same basic messaging that got Kirk killed, when Kimmel’s canning was simply a corporate decision. In recent years, when cancel culture was at its peak, the very same woke ABC/Disney machine: • Fired Roseanne Barr from her show because of a single Ambien-fueled joke on Twitter about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett that was deemed racist. • Fired “The Mandalorian” star Gina Carano over some pointed political posts on social media that did not fit their woke view of the world. • Forced out longtime “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison for showing sympathy for a contestant who got canceled after trolls dug up that she had attended an antebellum plantation-themed party years before in college. Not a peep from those weeping and gnashing teeth over Kimmel’s ouster.

Let’s go back even further. This same ABC canceled Bill Maher’s show “Politically Incorrect” after 9/11 when he suggested the hijackers were not “cowards” because they undertook a suicide mission … as opposed to the U.S. military lobbing bombs from a thousand miles away. Nobody’s infringing Kimmel’s free speech. He’s free to launch a podcast tomorrow … free to play the martyr on X …. free to do more blackface. Free to hit open mic nights and pretend to again be a comedian. And ABC is free to say they don’t want Kimmel representing the network.

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Shapiro undoubtedly thinks he makes a coherent argument. It’s just that I don’t see it.

The Assassination and the Violent Movements We Must Denounce (Ben Shapiro)

This week, my friend Charlie Kirk was murdered in cold blood in front of a crowd of thousands at Utah Valley University. He was assassinated while debating with students — something Charlie did frequently, and with aplomb — by a radicalized leftist with a trans boyfriend. That assassin decided to kill Charlie because of Charlie’s belief that men cannot become women, and vice versa; as he allegedly wrote in a text message to that trans boyfriend, “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out. If I am able to grab my rifle unseen, I will have left no evidence.”

I was in Los Angeles when Charlie was shot. My first reaction was shock; my second, horror; and my third, the realization that the shooting was almost certainly the result of a radicalized leftist, probably associated with transgender ideology. If we are to be honest with ourselves, we all have such reactions upon learning of acts of evil: We jump to the most likely conclusion about the source of that evil. If a synagogue is targeted in a mass shooting, the suspect will almost certainly be either a radical Muslim or a white supremacist; if a church is targeted, a radical Muslim or a trans activist; if a CEO is shot, a Marxist radical of some sort. There is a reason for such suppositions: Not all ideologies are equally likely to produce violence at the margins.

Ideologies that breed violence share three specific elements. First, they share a conspiratorial view of the universe in which a shadowy cabal of powerful people are responsible for all of your failures and shortcomings, and in which their arguments are not in fact arguments, but instead, a la Michel Foucault, a facade for power. Second, such ideologies share a belief that you or your group are being targeted for destruction by that shadowy cabal. Finally, such ideologies hold that violence is justifiable self-defense.

All the ideologies listed above fit this model. Trans ideology argues that trans people are victims of a conspiracy — a conspiracy to deny their identity; that such denial is responsible for all their life problems and amounts to a form of “erasure” or “genocide”; and that the proper response to such “hate” is violence. Radical Marxism argues that poor people are victims of a conspiracy of the wealthy, who exploit them; arguments on behalf of free markets are merely false consciousness promoted by the powerful; violence is therefore an appropriate response (“FREE LUIGI!”). White supremacy argues that whites are being targeted by people of color, Jews, and other minorities and fellow travelers; their very existence is a threat, and force is thus a justifiable response. Radical Islam argues that the failures of Islamic civilization are due to imperialism and colonialism; that the success of the West is inherently violent; and that violence is the proper response.

When politicians say, therefore, that they are against “political violence” but then move to justify violence by massaging these ideologies, their words are useless. They are a prettification of reality, an attempt to gloss over radical evils gnawing at the intestines of a functional society. Even worse, politicians who continue to foment such ideologies provide a permission structure for violence, excusing it and even valorizing it. The only way to truly fight political violence is to denounce the ideologies that breed it. Anything less means that more radicals take their ideologies to the logical extreme — and the result is blood in the streets, innocents dead and an ever-widening cycle of violence.

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“..it’s possible that the very organizations he needed to carry out his order — the FBI and DOJ — were too busy trying to destroy his presidency.”

Trump to Antifa: IT’S GOING DOWN (Victoria Taft)

President Trump announced on TruthSocial on Constitution Day that he is officially designating Antifa a domestic terrorist organization. To commemorate the occasion, I’ve used one of Antifa’s own hype quotes from its posters, websites, and signs to announce: Antifa: It’s Going Down. It’ll take some work, but at least some of the people in this destructive, antisocial organization will likely get rolled up in the Trump Administration’s efforts to treat Antifa like the terror organization it has proven itself to be. Trump 45 gave oxygen to the idea of treating Antifa like a terrorist organization, but it’s possible that the very organizations he needed to carry out his order — the FBI and DOJ — were too busy trying to destroy his presidency. Political treachery carries a cost. And Portland has carried much of that cost.

Despite Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s endorsement of Antifa in that feature photo above, Antifa has been a scourge on the American political landscape for more than a decade. You saw their work in Portland, starting in 2015 when they made their presence known by running “security” as “allies” of the Black Lives Matter movement. There were swarming assaults on independent journalists such as Mike Strickland and Andy Ngo before and after Donald Trump’s election, and, most notoriously, you, like most of the nation, were horrified by the “Summer of Love” in 2020. Those riots were so calamitous that Portland hasn’t yet recovered from the untold hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and the ongoing public relations disaster that cost the city and local businesses millions more. The recent sale of a downtown high-rise for pennies on the dollar shows the disrepute in which Portland — and the security of its citizens — is held.

Seattle’s autonomous zone, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Kenosha, and Antifa in San Diego were all involved in what looks like a conspiracy to foment violence. Professional protesters started hundreds or thousands of riots with impunity. Those few who were arrested were freed by woke George Soros district attorneys. The damage done by this group is unquantifiable. It certainly was for Aaron Danielson’s family. He’s the man who was assassinated on the streets of Portland in 2020 during Antifa’s “Summer of Love.” Danielson was part of the group Patriot Prayer. That group would hold free speech rallies, and when Antifa invariably showed up to start the violence, the Patriot Prayer guys would make sure the Anti-First Amendment collection of trans, soy boys, and strapped and trained Antifa members regretted it.

Patriot Prayer was eventually and unofficially PNG’d from Portland by city and county officials. That’s right: Portland eventually kicked out the only people doing anything about Antifa. That happened after an Antifa shoot-out on Portland streets. We digress, however. Danielson was walking with his buddy in downtown Portland during the riots and was shot at point-blank range by a “100% Antifa” assassin. I wrote about it in this story, “Police Say Suspected Antifa Hit-Man Stalked Pro-Trump Victim Before Portland Murder.” Oh, Antifa has much to answer for. If you think designating them as a terrorist organization is impossible because of our First Amendment laws, however, you may have a point. But there is hope of finally bringing these bastards to court.

In 2021, God bless San Diego County for charging a violent sect of Antifa, some of them on loan from L.A., under state law. I wrote about it then in this story, “Violent Antifa Terrorists Are Finally Prosecuted for Attacking Conservatives,” and in 2023, a swath of this group was found guilty. Three years later, I wrote about their sentencing in my West Coast, Messed Coast™ report, in which one of the defendants apologized at his sentencing, saying, “I want to apologize to the victims and the city of San Diego. No one should be attacked for their political views.” I wrote at the time, “…another blaring advertisement for requiring civics to be taught in schools.” Defendants were brought up on a variety of charges. But they were also charged with a conspiracy to commit riot.

The Antifa of their day were members of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF). A federal prosecution that few remember occurred in Oregon — if you can believe it — and was against ELF and ALF, which the feds dubbed “The Family.” These were the same losers that, over a period of years from mid-1990s until someone set that Vail ski lodge on fire, incinerated a lab and 20 years of research at the University of Washington Horticulture Center, burned a “street of dreams” multi-million dollar home in Seattle, torched a San Diego condo complex under construction, and firebombed SUV dealerships, attacked furriers, torched an excavator in Mexico, and conspired to do it all in their commune in Eugene, Ore. It was a case that no one thought would ever come to fruition, and the members of those domestic terrorist groups were rolled up by the feds in Operation Backfire in 2006. The last person was sentenced in 2009.

On Wednesday, Ryan Mauro of the Capital Research Center released his report about the tentacles of the George Soros empire in the violent movements on college campuses and America’s streets. It’s quite enlightening. You should read it. The most salient part of his research concerns the funding of Antifa’s violent takeover of what they called “Cop City” in Atlanta. Antifa expert, independent reporter Andy Ngo, said he thinks there might be some problem going after Antifa as a terrorist organization because, under current U.S. law, there must be an international touchstone. Mauro’s report may indeed be the international touchstone connecting Antifa in America. On page 60 of his 95-page report, Mauro discovered that the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, which has ties to Hamas and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, helped support the Antifa group in their “Stop Cop City” reign of terror.

The Alliance has also come to the defense of the aforementioned Stop Cop City/Defend the Atlanta Forest terrorists. …In 2020, the Alliance endorsed violence against law enforcement, posting a graphic showing weapons and criminal tactics used by protestors, such as blockading roads in order to impede police cars and encouraging demonstrators not to provide information about each other’s crimes. Over 40 of the anarchists are being prosecuted on domestic terrorism charges as of February 2024 and over 60 were indicted in August 2023 on racketeering charges. Among those accused of being terrorists is Thomas Jurgens, one of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s attorneys.

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This should be good.

Brigitte Macron To Prove To US Court She’s A Woman (NYP)

French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte, will present photographic and scientific evidence to a US court to prove the French first lady is, in fact, a woman. The two are submitting the documentation as part of a defamation lawsuit against conservative influencer Candace Owens, who claimed that Brigitte Macron was born a male and later secretly transitioned. The Macrons’ attorney, Tom Clare, told the BBC’s “Fame Under Fire” podcast that there will be “expert testimony that will come out that will be scientific in nature.” The attorney did not elaborate on exactly what it would be, beyond that it would include pictures of Brigitte, now 72, when she was pregnant with their kids.

The French power couple is ready to demonstrate “both generically and specifically” that the allegations are false, Clare stated firmly. “It is incredibly upsetting to think that you have to go and subject yourself, to put this type of proof forward,” he said of the distress it has caused the first lady. “It is a process that she will have to subject herself to in a very public way. But she’s willing to do it. She is firmly resolved to do what it takes to set the record straight,” he said. Owens has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that Brigitte Macron, 72, was born male — going as far as to say on her podcast earlier this year that she “would stake my entire professional career on all of those points.”

The Macrons filed a lawsuit against Owens in Delaware in July, alleging Owens “disregarded all credible evidence disproving her claim in favor of platforming known conspiracy theorists and proven defamers.”Owens’ claims are similar to those previously made in France by two women whom Brigitte Macron sued in 2021. That case was initially ruled in the French first lady’s favor but has been overturned on appeal. She has taken the case to France’s highest appeals court. Brigitte Macron was 39 years old when she became the future French leader’s teacher when he was 15 in 1993. The pair married in 2007.

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“Two British experts discussing the French mess for the conservative British magazine Spectator could not help but recall that the French Revolution – the big one, 1789 – started with a debt crisis, too.”

Macron Is In A Political Death Spiral (Amar)

The France of President Emmanuel Macron, who is really the egomaniac-in-chief, is somewhere on the spectrum between “spiraling political crisis” (Financial Times), “big trouble” (The Economist) and terminal collapse. Again. Barely a week after a new, if fragile, government was cobbled together in acute crisis mode, the country is bracing “for big anti-austerity street marches and labor strikes,” while the state’s finances are “pernicious” and the budget for 2026 a big question without an answer. In Paris, for instance, the Metro is semi-comatose; in the country as whole, a third of teachers are on strike. An earlier wave of protests – under the slogan “Let’s block everything”– did not quite achieve that ambitious aim, but it did attract double the number of participants the authorities had expected.

In that respect – even if they were different in their ideological background – the French protests resemble the recent ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally in London. On both sides of the Channel, decrepit, unpopular, unresponsive Centrist regimes are barely hanging on now. As the French have taught us to say “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (“The more things change, the more they stay the same”). Especially after Macron’s two irresponsible and egotistic decisions of 2024, France can’t find a way out of the mess he has created: first, he called snap parliamentary elections to then, second, ignore the will of the French voters.

If Macron had respected the results of the elections that he himself initiated, he would have had to charge either a left-wing bloc, with the most combined votes, or the new-right Rassemblement National (RN), which obtained the most votes for a single party, with building a new government. Yet the man with a vast ego and an incredibly shrinking popularity base, clearly rejected by a preponderant majority of his people, felt he knew better. Since then Macron has tried to impose his will against parliament. The problem? Parliament won’t agree.

So, after what the YouTube channel of venerable left journal l’Humanité calls “the parliamentary hara-kiri” of the last politically short-lived prime minister, here we go again. Total deadlock at the political center; in the streets, picturesque unrest featuring traditional folklore, such as burning rubbish bins, baton-charging police, and teargas galore; and finally, yet another compulsive attempt by Macron the Unpopular to succeed with what keeps failing: installing a new – his fifth in less than two years – prime minister (his name is Sébastien Lecornu, but don’t bother remembering) who has no majority in parliament and thus, cannot possibly pass the budget ex-investment banker Macron wants in order to get his kind of austeritarian-neoliberal handle on France’s very real debt crisis. Please the rich, squeeze all others.

In short, since Macron refuses to either call fresh parliamentary elections or go away, let’s do the doom loop again. That at least is a tempting reading of the current situation in Paris and the unfortunate country that its detached president plagues. And yet, perhaps things are different this time. As in, even worse. Maybe this crisis is not just bad-business-as-usual but a sign that a bigger political earthquake is coming, the kind that reshapes the landscape. Consider for starters the intriguing frequency with which commentators are making historic comparisons. Two British experts discussing the French mess for the conservative British magazine Spectator could not help but recall that the French Revolution – the big one, 1789 – started with a debt crisis, too.

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“Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that Trump had shifted “from issuing an ultimatum for an unconditional ceasefire to advocating for a long-term, sustainable solution.”

‘Not The Right Time’ To Call For Russia-Ukraine Ceasefire – Trump (RT)

US President Donald Trump said it is not the right time for him to call for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. A reporter asked Trump aboard Air Force One whether it was time to press for a ceasefire, noting that a month has passed since his rare face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. “It doesn’t feel like it,” Trump said. “But at the right time, if I have to do it, it will be harsh,” he added. Trump, who has at times criticized both Russia and Ukraine, recently admitted that negotiating an end to the conflict would be harder than he had anticipated. Speaking at a press conference with Prime Minister Keir Starmer during his trip to the UK on Thursday, Trump said that Putin had “really let me down.”

Last week, the US president said he would impose additional “major sanctions” on Moscow, but only if all NATO members stop purchasing Russian oil. “This is not TRUMP’S WAR (it would never have started if I was president!), it is Biden’s and Zelenskyy’s WAR,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform, referring to his predecessor and the leader of Ukraine. In an interview aired on Russian TV on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that Trump had shifted “from issuing an ultimatum for an unconditional ceasefire to advocating for a long-term, sustainable solution.” Moscow has demanded that Ukraine recognize its new borders, abandon its plan to join NATO in favor of permanent neutrality, and agree to limit its military. Zelensky has rejected these terms.

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“..the district court judge “lacked authority to order reinstatement as an equitable remedy for the removal of an officer of the United States..”

Trump Files Emergency Request With SCOTUS To Make Lisa Cook Fired Again (ZH)

The Trump administration filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook from the central bank’s board while a lawsuit plays out in lower court over Cook’s ouster by President Trump last month. The request comes after a federal appeals court in Washington DC rejected the administration’s attempt to remove an order blocking Cook’s removal in a 2-1 decision the night before the Fed’s meeting earlier this week. “This application involves yet another case of improper judicial interference with the President’s removal authority — here, interference with the President’s authority to remove members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for cause,” wrote the administration’s lawyer, Solicitor General John Sauer.

According to court filings, the Trump administration maintains that Cook committed mortgage fraud based on evidence provided by Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte – which showed that Cook claimed two properties as her primary residence within weeks of each other. On Aug. 25, Trump announced that he was firing Cook from the seven-member Fed Board. Cook sued in response, resulting in a federal district court on Sept. 9 barring her removal while the suit plays out – which the appeals court upheld. Sauer says that the Supreme Court, for various reasons, should stay the district court judge’s preliminary injunction reinstating Cook to the Fed, claiming that the DOJ is likely to prevail in the lawsuit “because Cook lacks a Fifth Amendment property interest in her continued service as a Governor of the Federal Reserve System,” and her job is not protected by due process considerations.

Sauer also disputed the judge’s alternative finding that Cook’s firing “for cause” was invalid because the alleged conduct occurred before she was appointed to the Fed. “The Federal Reserve Act’s broad ‘for cause’ provision rules out removal for no reason at all, or for policy disagreement,” he wrote, adding “But so long as the President identifies a cause, the determination of ‘some cause relating to the conduct, ability, fitness, or competence of the officer’ is within the President’s unreviewable discretion.” “Cook had made contradictory representations in two mortgage agreements a short time apart, claiming that both a property in Michigan and a property in Georgia would simultaneously serve as her principal residence,” Sauer continued. “Each mortgage agreement described the representation as material to the lender, reflecting the reality that lenders usually offer lower interest rates for principal-residence mortgages because they view such mortgages as less risky.”

“When her apparent misconduct came to light, the President determined that Cook’s ‘deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter’ renders her unfit to continue serving on the Federal Reserve Board, and at a minimum demonstrates ‘the sort of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question [her] competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator.” Sauer also says that the district court judge “lacked authority to order reinstatement as an equitable remedy for the removal of an officer of the United States, as we have discussed in several recent stay applications.” Cook has denied wrongdoing, and has argued that unproven allegations are not sufficient grounds for removing the Biden appointee.

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“.. the administration “does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress.”

RFK Jr. Cannot Proceed With Overhaul of Health Agencies, Court Rules (ET)

A federal appeals court on Sept. 17 declined to lift a preliminary injunction blocking a plan by Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to overhaul the department in line with the Trump administration’s policy priorities. Attorneys general from 19 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in May challenging Kennedy’s restructuring of HHS, including layoffs and the reorganization of several agencies, arguing that the changes violate federal law and the U.S. Constitution.= On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the Boston-based First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the Trump administration’s claim that the states could not show they would be immediately harmed if the injunction were lifted pending an appeal. The panel noted that the lower court relied on hundreds of pages of testimony from state officials.

“The government does not explain how the district court clearly erred in crediting these uncontroverted facts,” the court said in an unsigned order. Kennedy announced on March 27 that his department would “streamline the functions” of its federal workforce by consolidating subagencies, reducing the number of regional offices, and implementing a reduction-in-force plan that would impact 10,000 HHS employees. They were all offered buy-out options to incentivize them to quit ahead of the announced job cuts. The restructuring plan looked to streamline 28 divisions into 15, and close half of the department’s 10 regional offices. Four HHS sub-agencies were named in the restructuring: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Head Start, and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE).

Attorneys general filed a lawsuit in federal court in Rhode Island challenging the restructuring plan. Plaintiffs said the executive action violated the Administrative Procedure Act and exceeded the scope of executive authority, violating the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine and appropriations clause. They also pointed to potential harms their states would face if the executive action were allowed to proceed, saying their agencies would be unable to conduct sufficient laboratory testing or process critical health data needed to track infectious diseases and improve maternal and infant health outcomes. They added that the reforms would create financial strain, forcing the states to cover funding gaps left by the pullback in federal resources.

The Trump administration had argued that the states’ case rested on speculation about what harms they would suffer as a result of changes to department services, and that any challenges to the firings had to be pursued by the federal employees themselves before the Merit Systems Protection Board. In July, the District Court for the District of Rhode Island granted a preliminary injunction to the plaintiffs. U.S. District Judge Melissa DuBose ruled that the administration “does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress.” Her injunction ordered the HHS to freeze its reduction-in-force and restructuring plans at the four agencies. On Aug. 12, the government filed to temporarily lift the injunction, pending court proceedings.

In its appeal, the HHS said that the lower court ruling should be set aside as the lawsuit was functionally identical to two earlier cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court lifted orders requiring it to reinstate employees let go en masse at other agencies by the administration. The Epoch Times contacted the HHS and the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James, which is spearheading the lawsuit, for comment but received no response by publication time. HHS’s mandate is to “enhance the health and well-being of all Americans, by providing for effective health and human services and by fostering sound, sustained advances in the sciences underlying medicine, public health, and social services,” according to its website.

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“Today, these countries not only occupy most of the earth’s land and constitute the majority of the world’s population but they also account for the majority of the world’s GDP.”

The ‘Golden Billion’ Has Lost Its Crown (Bobrov)

In economics and sociology, there’s a well-known observation called the Pareto Principle. Named after the Franco-Italian thinker Vilfredo Pareto, it is often summarized as the “80/20 rule”: 20 percent of efforts yield 80 percent of results, while the remaining 80 percent of efforts account for just 20 percent. Over time, this idea inspired Western “elite theory,” a convenient justification for why every society contains an active minority that dominates a passive majority – why 20 percent of the population holds 80 percent of the wealth. Today, the principle has outgrown national borders. In diplomacy, it has come to symbolize a deeper conflict: the “global minority” versus the “global majority.”

The first group, sometimes called the “golden billion,” began to take shape in the late 20th and early 21st centuries under the Democratic administrations in the United States and their allies in the G7 and NATO. This group gradually solidified its position through exploiting globalization in their favor. In contrast, the latter group, resisting the formation of a unipolar world and advocating for a more equitable multipolar global order, has gained increasing significance on the world stage. This momentum has been fueled not only by the individual efforts of nations like Russia, China, and India but also through the establishment of fundamentally new institutions for multilateral diplomacy such as BRICS, the SCO, and others.

Achieving significant progress in diminishing the hegemony of the collective West, evidenced by the SCO+ summit in Tianjin (August 31 – September 1, 2025) which became the largest in the organization’s history, and the second BRICS summit during Brazil’s presidency this year (September 8, 2025), the nations of the ‘global majority’ have effectively reversed the Pareto principle. Today, these countries not only occupy most of the earth’s land and constitute the majority of the world’s population but they also account for the majority of the world’s GDP. Leveraging their vast reserves of essential resources and consistently demonstrating robust economic growth, these nations have achieved remarkable success by overcoming internal divisions and consolidating power with the support of their populations.

In stark contrast, the countries of the “global minority” are witnessing an opposite trend. As they lose their leading positions in the global economy and access to key natural resources, political fragmentation is becoming prevalent. In many of these nations, an active minority with low trust ratings clings to power. This has resulted in deepening societal divides in numerous countries – from the US, UK, and France to Poland and Israel – and a clear paralysis of government authority. For instance, in the US, the Democrats, who are rapidly losing ground, are resorting to increasingly radical political tactics.

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NOTE: Russian debt-to-GDP is 18-20%. US debt-to-GDP is 124%.

Bank of Russia Governor Dismisses Talk Of Recession (RT)

Russia is not in recession, central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina said on Thursday, adding that a slowdown in growth should not be mistaken for an outright contraction. Since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, Russia has operated under sweeping Western sanctions. The economy, however, has proved resilient, with GDP expanding 4.1% in 2023 and 4.3% in 2024. Growth is expected to slow to 2.5% this year, with the central bank’s forecast even more cautious, at 1-2%. Nabiullina said Russia was experiencing an economic slowdown but not a recession, stressing that even the criteria for a technical recession — two consecutive quarters of contraction — had not been met.

“One should not confuse a recession, which I agree is associated with very negative phenomena, with an economic slowdown. Yes, the economy is slowing, but there is no recession,” she said at the Moscow Financial Forum. She noted that growth had cooled to more moderate levels after a period of overheating, though the summer months had brought signs of renewed activity, including stronger consumer demand and rising corporate lending. Earlier this month, Russian Economic Development Minister Maksim Reshetnikov said growth was slowing faster than expected and that forecasts were being revised. He had earlier warned that the country was close to recession, with the outcome hinging on policy and interest rates.

The central bank, which raised its key rate to a record 21% in October 2024 to curb inflation, has since cut it to 17%. His warnings were echoed by Sberbank CEO Herman Gref, who described the second quarter (April-June) as a period of “technical stagnation” and urged timely measures, including lower borrowing costs, to avoid slipping into recession. “July and August showed clear signs we are approaching zero growth,” he said. Russian President Vladimir Putin disagreed with the assessment, saying that while many were unhappy with the central bank’s key rate, it was necessary to fight inflation. He warned that sharp cuts to the rate could trigger higher prices.

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She almost took over Canada.

“ACHIEVED MORE FOR UKRAINIAN FASCISM (2013-2025) THAN HER GRANDFATHER ACHIEVED AS HITLER’S PROPAGANDIST AND SPY (1939-45)”

Great Moments In The History Of Chrystia Freeland’s Failure (Helmer)

Chrystia Freeland’s final leap at political power in her 12-year attempt to rule Canada ended yesterday when she fell flat on her face. Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose push has proved more kinetic than Freeland’s jump, allowed this to be understood when he offered Freeland the less than face-saving post of reconstructing the Ukraine which her warfighting campaign against Russia has all but destroyed. The cost to Canada of this destruction since the Special Military Operation began in February 2022 has been C$22 billion, including about C$13 billion in loans which the Kiev regime cannot repay but which are being serviced from the interest earned on Russian assets seized by the NATO allies. Freeland’s ouster was so rushed, there was no time for her to explain what the hurry was in her departure, nor for Carney to prepare what Freeland would be doing as his special envoy to the Ukraine without any staff or diplomatic rank.

In his official release, Carney appeared not to know that Freeland is resigning her parliamentary seat. According to Carney’s announcement, Freeland had “helped to secure historic trade negotiations, guide the response to a global pandemic, complete early learning and child care agreements across Canada, and…remove all federal barriers to internal trade.” Not a word about the priorities of Freeland’s career, war against Russia and war against China. “I have asked Chrystia to serve as Canada’s new Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine,” Carney said, “in addition to her responsibilities as a Member of Parliament.” Carney is believed to have authorized press leaks ahead of his cabinet meeting on Tuesday to reveal Freeland was resigning her combined portfolio of internal trade and transport. In the rush, Carney took several hours before deciding to split the portfolios and assign them to different individuals.

After the cabinet meeting Freeland avoided the press. Returning to her office, she drafted the social media post of a letter which she addressed, not to the prime minister, but to “dear neighbours, dear Canadians.” She then announced: “I do not intend to run in the next federal election.” As her reason for the exit, Freeland claimed she “is not leaving to spend more time with my family or because the burden of elected office is too heavy to bear.” Instead, “after twelve fulfilling years in public life, I know that now is the right time for me to make way for others and to seek fresh changes for myself.”

Freeland had her 57th birthday last month. A Canadian source in a position to know commented that there have been growing policy differences between Carney and Freeland. “Carney has signaled his willingness to lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle (EV) imports in order to secure Chinese cooperation on their tariffs on Canadian canola. Freeland is recognized in Beijing as a China-hater who, as we know, made sabotaging Canada’s relationship with Beijing a top priority.” Canola is Canada’s most valuable field crop and farm export, with farm cash receipts of C$12.9 billion in 2024.

China had been importing about two-thirds of the Canadian canola crop until Beijing imposed a 100% tariff on canola oil and canola meal in March, and then a 76% tariff on canola seed in August. This was retaliation against a series of hostile Canadian political and trade attacks on China, culminating in August 2024 in a 100% tariff on EV imports and a 25% tariff on imported Chinese steel and aluminium. Freeland’s “past behaviour”, said the source, “displays that she’s not at all trustworthy, let alone capable of putting the government’s goals in front of her own ambitions. Other members of cabinet didn’t hide their dislike of her from Carney. She has the reputation of blowing up cabinet meetings with clumsy, hysterical attempts to run everyone else’s business. That has threatened Carney. Freeland then underestimated his ruthlessness in getting rid of her.”

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One oil tanker disaster and….

China To Test Arctic Express Route To Europe (RT)

China is preparing to launch a new shipping route along Russia’s Northern coast, via the Arctic to Europe, Politico has reported on Thursday. The Northern Sea Route (NSR), which runs for thousands of miles through Russia’s Arctic waters along its northern coast, has become more accessible due to receding sea ice and has been hailed in Moscow as an opportunity for new international projects. On September 20 China is sending the Istanbul Bridge container ship on an 18-day trip with icebreaker escort from Ningbo-Zhoushan port to Felixstowe in the UK. The new route is significantly faster than traditional voyages, which take about 40 days via the Suez Canal, 50 days via the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s southern tip, and around 25 days via Eurasian railways.

“The Arctic is the first region where climate change is changing the geopolitical map,” Malte Humpert of the Arctic Institute told Politico, adding that the region is “changing the geopolitical dynamics because of resources and access to shipping routes.” He noted that while most trade still flows through the Suez Canal, Mediterranean and Singapore, the Arctic could soon become an alternative because the voyage is about 40% shorter and faces “a lot less geopolitical uncertainty.” His comments come as traditional corridors like the Suez Canal have faced piracy flare-ups near the Horn of Africa and missile and drone threats in the Red Sea, pushing some carriers to detour around Africa.

Russia has repeatedly called for international cooperation to develop the Arctic. Earlier this year, President Vladimir Putin outlined goals for the region, including making the Northern Sea Route a central part of the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor and raising cargo volumes to 70–100 million tons by the end of the decade. He also announced plans to ensure year-round navigation supported by Russia’s exclusive nuclear icebreaker fleet, as well as to expand existing ports such as Murmansk and build new ones along the route. Putin has further highlighted the vast opportunities for oil, gas, metals and rare earth extraction in the Arctic, calling for joint ventures with foreign partners such as China, India, the UAE and others. He has also pledged to expand development of Arctic cities and promote tourism across the region.

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Rogan

Yeadon

statins

 

 

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Sep 152025
 


Édouard Manet Woman with a jug 1858-60

 

Suspected Assassin Has Not Confessed To Killing Charlie Kirk – Utah Gov. (RT)
“He Was A Savant” – Charlie Kirk Challenged and Inspired a Generation (Morgan)
Three Background Facets in the Charlie Kirk Assassination (CTH)
Bill Maher Shreds Left’s Disgraceful Response to Charlie Kirk Death (Margolis)
White House Plans Security Boost On Civil Terrorism Fears (ZH)
Trump Shares Call For ‘Charlie Kirk Act’ To Hold Media Accountable (RT)
Antifa Defaces Memorial For Zarutska and Kirk In Vienna (RT)
Teacher Forces Students To Watch Charlie Kirk Murder Video (Margolis)
Europe On “High Alert” As Polish Moms Train For War Against Russia (ZH)
France Is Only The Front Line In A Crisis Gripping The G7 (Lukyanov)
‘Unite The Kingdom’ Is a Harbinger of a Western European Cataclysm (Amar)
EU Must Mend Relations With Trump – Kallas (RT)
EU NATO Members Displeased With US Reaction To ‘Russian Drone Incursion’ (RT)
IMF Warns Of Major Gap In Ukraine’s Finances – Bloomberg (RT)

 

 

https://twitter.com/TaraBull808/status/1967219282556891401
https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1967384759257981334

https://twitter.com/MAGAVoice/status/1966943388072366543

https://twitter.com/DogRightGirl/status/1967242013398741271

https://twitter.com/TRUMP_ARMY_/status/1967176703886954895

https://twitter.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1966956948194292004

 

 

“All we can confirm is that those conversations definitely were happening, and they did not believe it was actually him. It was … all joking until… he admitted that it actually was him.”

Suspected Assassin Has Not Confessed To Killing Charlie Kirk – Utah Gov. (RT)

The suspected assassin of conservative activist Charlie Kirk is refusing to cooperate with the investigation, Utah Governor Spencer Cox has told ABC. The authorities are currently gathering evidence from “people around him” and his online activities, according to the governor. Tyler Robinson, 22, the alleged shooter, remains in custody. He is expected to face formal charges on Tuesday, Cox said. “He has not confessed… to authorities. He … is not cooperating,” the governor stated, adding that “all the people around him are cooperating.” Cox noted that the suspect had a trans partner, confirming earlier media reports. “We can confirm that… his roommate was indeed a boyfriend who is transitioning from… male to female,” which was also verified by the FBI, he said. This person is cooperating with the authorities, according to the governor.

The investigators also established that the suspect talked to acquaintances about the shooting after the incident on Discord and claimed responsibility for it, Cox stated. “All we can confirm is that those conversations definitely were happening, and they did not believe it was actually him. It was … all joking until… he admitted that it actually was him.” The motive of the murder remains unclear, according to ABC. Cox previously told the Wall Street Journal that Robinson was “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.” Asked by ABC to comment on the statement, he replied: “so far, that has come from his acquaintances and his family members.”

Kirk, 31, the founder of Turning Point USA, was fatally shot in the neck while addressing students in Orem, Utah. Robinson was arrested on Friday after his father reportedly recognized him in surveillance footage and persuaded him to surrender. Police recovered a Mauser .30 caliber bolt-action rifle and ammunition engraved with slogans such as “Hey fascist! Catch!” near the shooting scene. US President Donald Trump said in the wake of the incident that Kirk’s murderer should face the death penalty. Cox also previously said the authorities would seek capital punishment for the assassin.

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“..we actually filmed a video together where he said that he, you know, supports the gay community, and that e pluribus unum, represents all Americans,..

“He Was A Savant” – Charlie Kirk Challenged and Inspired a Generation (Morgan)

By the time he set off on his final campus speaking tour, Charlie Kirk had built an organization of some 250,000 members, all the while engaging in conservative political organizing, engineering get-out-the-vote efforts, drawing tens of millions of dollars in funding, and growing a media influence machine. A driving force behind Kirk’s movement, Turning Point USA, has been his focus on engaging young minds in political debate and setting an example for new generations of political influencers like himself. Through this mission, Kirk often found himself on a college campus, delivering a speech or sitting down with a table and a microphone and defying his critics with the prompt “prove me wrong,” even in the face of insults and threats. He continued this mission until the very end.

“Charlie Kirk could’ve been running his multi-million dollar operation from a fancy suite or a fancy office, and he could’ve just hired the dangerous part of what he did out to other activists, and instead of doing that, he always stayed in the trenches. And I think that’s one of the most admirable things about him,” said Gunnar Thorderson, a former Turning Point USA organizer who helped establish the organization’s presence at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, where Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10. Thorderson rose from the Turning Point USA chapter president at UVU to a state-level director for the organization in Utah. Now, Thorderson is a sitting member of the Utah Republican State Central Committee. He attributes his trajectory, in large part, to Kirk’s personal mentorship.

“I really got to view him as a mentor and as a personal friend, as he would invest in me one-on-one, on many occasions,” he told The Epoch Times. Thorderson is among many whose political voices Kirk amplified since co-founding Turning Point USA in 2012. “I owe my entire political career to Charlie Kirk,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said in an X post the day after Kirk’s death. “I would quite literally not be in office today if it weren’t for him. Even when my own party was working against me, Charlie endorsed me and campaigned to help me win election.” Luna’s communications director, David Leatherwood, also came into his own, politically, through Turning Point USA and Kirk’s personal support. Leatherwood, 37, a self-described gay conservative, first met Kirk in 2017.

“I met Charlie at one of his campus tours in Fort Lauderdale, and we actually filmed a video together where he said that he, you know, supports the gay community, and that e pluribus unum, represents all Americans,” Leatherwood told The Epoch Times. “And ever since that day, he was always supportive of me, and he invited me to be an ambassador for his organization.” Hallie S., 26, from Gainesville, Florida, credits Kirk’s organization with helping her and other conservative students at Santa Fe College be more outspoken with their views. “I’ve always been more conservative. I was raised conservative, but was never big about speaking up, especially in Gainesville, which is such a liberal area, and you never know how people are going to react,” she said.

Hallie said she was able to revamp the College Republicans chapter at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, thanks in large part to the influence of Kirk and Turning Point USA. “Charlie Kirk was a huge portion of that. He had a huge impact on politics on college campuses, especially in Santa Fe,” she told The Epoch Times. “You had all these students that were like, ‘wow, my conservative values are being represented in a way that really had never been represented before.’” Kelly Shackelford, a First Amendment attorney and president and CEO of First Liberty Institute, said he invited Kirk to speak at a fundraising event in Houston, Texas, shortly after discovering the young influencer. “Typically at fundraisers, everybody’s 60-and-older,” Shackelford told the Epoch Times. “And so I wanted to encourage these older people that there are younger people who are coming behind them, and it’s not going to die with them.”

With much of his content shared online, Kirk’s influence spread beyond the numerous college campuses he visited over the years and reached millions online. Tucker, a teenager who requested his surname not be revealed due to fear of retaliation, told The Epoch Times that Kirk was among a limited number of political influencers whose content he liked to engage with. “I don’t really like watching political stuff. I mean, it’ll come up like on TikTok or something like that, and I just scroll past it,” Tucker said. “But when I saw his stuff, I would always click on it cause it was always interesting and he was just somebody that you could look up to.” During an interview on California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s podcast in March, the Democratic governor confessed that his 13-year-old son wanted to skip school for a chance to meet Kirk. “Literally last night, trying to put my son to bed, he’s like, ‘Dad I just—what time, what time is Charlie gonna be here? What time?’” Newsom said. “And I’m like, ‘dude, you’re in school tomorrow.’”

Leatherwood said he was comforted knowing how many moments of Kirk’s life were captured on camera, preserving his thoughts and views. “The beautiful thing about today and modern technology and our access, our access to media, is that, you know, there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of footage of him speaking. And those will live on, and I think they’ll actually memorialize his legacy in an even greater way than people can anticipate,” he said. Kirk made debate a core component of his mission. As he visited college campuses around the country, he often did so with a pop-up tent emblazoned with the words “prove me wrong,” and he offered up a microphone to those with differing points of view to confront him directly through dialogue.

“He went from campus to campus, engaging with students that he didn’t really view as the enemy ever. It was just that he felt they needed to be educated and that they needed to have proper discourse,” Thorderson said. “And it was through that that they would end up being convinced of our ideas.” Not all of Kirk’s interlocutors were swayed by his arguments, but they credited him for allowing a discussion. “I stand by so little of everything that [Kirk] said, but one of the things he stood by was conversation,” Hunter Kozak said in a video post the day after Kirk’s death. Kozak, 29, is a student at UVU and was the last person to debate with Kirk before he was shot. Kirk was just minutes into what was meant to be the first stop of his latest campus speaking tour when he was assassinated.

Dean Withers, who had debated Kirk, broke down in tears while filming a livestream on Sept. 10, as he learned Kirk had been shot. Addressing his initial reaction, Withers filmed another video that evening, acknowledging his disagreements with Kirk. “Does that mean I think he deserved to lose his life? No. Does that mean I think his two young children, who were in attendance at the event where he was shot, deserved to watch their father die? No. Does that mean I think they deserve to grow up without him? No. Does that mean I think that his wife, who was also there, deserved to lose her husband? No,” Withers said. “And honestly, if you answered yes to any of those questions, there’s a very clear line drawn between me and you. I don’t want your support, and I don’t support you either.”

Throughout his stardom as a conservative political influencer, Kirk frequently looked beyond politics and emphasized his Christian faith. Speaking with The Epoch Times, Thorderson recalled a morning when he and Kirk were traveling for an event and went for a workout in the hotel gym. It wasn’t long before their exercise turned philosophical. “I remember at the time, I was struggling with my own faith and kind of just playing devil’s advocate with him,” Thorderson recalled. “And he was just so steadfast in his faith and impressive with his knowledge. And that was a moment where I didn’t feel like he was necessarily preaching to me, but really just trying to connect on a personal level and trying to see me where I was at.”

At other points, Thorderson described Kirk being able to hold a knowledgeable conversation on matters beyond politics and articulate a connection back to his core values.“He was a savant,” Thorderson said. Thorderson also recalled having the chance to know Kirk when the Turning Point USA leader was getting to know his wife, Erika. “He just always valued family and wanted to start a family. And that was just, even before he had kids, that was a core value for him,” Thorderson said. Kirk leaves behind his wife Erika and two children.

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“Yes, Charlie Kirk had become openly critical of the decisions being made by the Israeli government. No, Charlie Kirk did not stop supporting Israel.”

Three Background Facets in the Charlie Kirk Assassination (CTH)

There are three background facets worth discussing in the Charlie Kirk assassination. To wit, a fulsome historic reference is likely worth creating, so we can all evaluate information with a similar baseline. (1) The background of events in the lead to Charlie Kirk’s murder; (2) the post-shooting activity of the FBI; and (3) the reality of motive carried by the 22-year-old assassin, Tyler Robinson. All three of these issues are separate and distinct; however, some people are dangerously merging them together. This should be avoided.To help avoid conflation that happens, it is worth addressing all three issues separately and comprehensively. In this outline we address the first, the background events swirling around TPUSA and Kirk prior to the shooting.

Turning Point USA (TPUSA) is a donor funded organization. Within the business of engaging causes of worth it takes money, often a lot of money, to run the core logistics of the operation. With Charlie Kirk removed from TPUSA’s mission, I hope their donors and supporters remain fully engaged and are able to expand on his life’s work. Back in 2022, the same background financial interests who were structuring the presidential run of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also supported TPUSA. Part of that collaboration surfaced in mid-August ’22, when DeSantis exited his five-days of silence in the aftermath of the FBI raid on President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate (August 8, 2022).

In the lead to the election campaign, DeSantis came out of his bunker directly into a promotional tour for his book, The Courage to be Free. The Florida governor joined TPUSA as several events to increase his national profile. As a natural outcome TPUSA was funded for a short time by the same people funding the DeSantis long-term launch. Many of these donors were already part of the TPUSA financial system; it was a natural convergence.

To his credit, Charlie Kirk viewed the DeSantis effort as supporting a solid conservative, a fellow in the bigger battle, and yet remained supportive of Donald Trump throughout the collaboration and into the presidential primary once DeSantis formally announced over a year later. Recently, when discussing the tragic event of Kirk’s assassination, Tucker Carlson noted Charlie Kirk took a lot of donor backlash for a shift in his position around the issue of Israel and the overwhelming retaliation taking place in Gaza. Both groups, professional evangelicals and strong Israel supporters, took exception to Kirk questioning the attack on Iran and the ongoing decisions by the Israeli government to continue bombardment of Gaza. WATCH:


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The donor backlash Tucker Carlson is referencing, is also evident in an earlier podcast segment Charlie Kirk did with Megyn Kelly about a month before his murder. Again, for fulsome understanding it is worth watching the entire segment.

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The reference Megyn Kelly and Charlie Kirk are outlining was/is a cultural shift amid a great deal of young people as it related to how they perceive Israel. The issue was weighing on Charlie Kirk who was a strong supporter of Israel and was known as a voice for Gen-Z independent thinkers. The issue was such an important topic for Kirk, he did an entire focus group discussion on it. From the perspective of Kirk, a distinction needed to be made between support for the nation state of Israel to exist, and criticism for the way the government of Israel was conducting the war against Hamas. However, the pro-Israel donor class do not permit this nuance. Additionally, Charlie Kirk was calling out secular Jews for funding the radical left.

Put the three issues together, (1) a reluctance for conflict with Iran, (2) concerns about how Israel had extended the Gaza conflict, and (3) direct criticism of Jews funding the radical left, and what you get is an overreaction by the Israel-first lobby calling Charlie Kirk ‘antisemitic’.Charlie Kirk was not ever an antisemite. However, his soft touches on the third rail of criticism toward Israel created massive backlash from his donor base; again, hard-core evangelicals and wealthy donors of the Jewish faith. This is not coincidentally the same donor base who funded the launch and 2024 primary effort of Ron DeSantis. Again, to his credit, in the two-months prior to his murder Charlie Kirk did not waiver from his position; a position that was entirely in alignment with the voice of the Gen-Z audience to whom he was connected most deeply.

However, due to Kirk’s history of unwavering support for Israel a shift in opinion was viewed as a risk. The need for control is a reaction to fear. A pressure campaign against Charlie Kirk was created by the aforementioned donor group. This is the context that surrounded the assassination. This context is not connected to the motive of the murderer, nor is it connected to the motive of the FBI in the aftermath. This background just sits alone as the accurate context for some of the external pressures that were upon Charlie Kirk for the two months that preceded his death.

Against this context, the donor groups, individuals and organizations that were participating in the pressure campaign, then had another concern in the aftermath of the shooting. Would they be blamed? Would this, once again, feed yet another conspiracy theory against Jews? That aspect explains the openly obvious media campaign that was waged by the donor groups, individuals and organizations in the aftermath of the shooting. What we saw was coordinated praise for Charlie Kirk by the same people who were criticizing him for a shift in tone and opinion toward Israel and waging the pressure campaign.

Obviously, the people who were pressuring Charlie Kirk would be very nervous about being blamed, and that aspect directly surfaces in the way members of the Jewish community and Israeli government reacted to his murder. The intent of this post is to create an honest record of what was taking place in the background prior to Kirk’s assassination. The reason clarity becomes important is because without it, dangerous conspiracies thrive.There is ZERO EVIDENCE any of these background ‘donor pressure’ issues had anything to do with the murder of Charlie Kirk, yet already online people are making direct and inferred connections that do not exist. Israel did not kill Charlie Kirk.

An unstable ideological leftist named Tyler Robinson, who was living with his transgender boyfriend Lance Twiggs, killed Charlie Kirk because they hated him.Tyler Robinson hated the purity of Christian values that Charlie Kirk represented. Every day that Charlie Kirk spoke to their peers and dismantled the lies, was another day Tyler and Lance felt threatened by the return of a moral society that was the foundation of Kirk’s advocacy. Do not let the issues conflate. Yes, Charlie Kirk had become openly critical of the decisions being made by the Israeli government. No, Charlie Kirk did not stop supporting Israel.

Yes, Charlie Kirk was facing significant backlash by the very influential Evangelical and Jewish donors to his TPUSA organization. Yes, the influential donors were trying to convince Kirk to stop being critical of the Israeli government. However, no, there is no evidence Israel had anything to do with the crazed behavior of a mentally unstable leftist who assassinated him. If that changes, we will openly and honestly outline it as we do with all subjects of great interest and consequence; but right now, there is no evidence of any connection. Pray for Charlie Kirk and his family. Honor his legacy and support all the new awakenings happening as a consequence of this tragic and violent event. Do not allow yourself to be drawn into the dark imaginings of those who have an ulterior agenda.

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“The people who mocked his death or justified it, I think, ‘You’re gross. I have no use for you,’” he said. “The people who are saying now we’re at war, I have no use for you.”

Bill Maher Shreds Left’s Disgraceful Response to Charlie Kirk Death (Margolis)

Bill Maher used his HBO show “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday night to call out the disgraceful reaction from some on the left to Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The discussion, which featured Ben Shapiro, quickly turned into a defense of free speech and a condemnation of the toxic rhetoric surrounding Kirk’s murder. “I didn’t realize this was gonna be kind of a theme show because we write our editorial before the week starts, and so it was all about freedom of speech,” Maher said. “Then the assassination occurred, so this is turning into a theme show. But it is kind of interesting that this guy was shot.” Maher noted that Kirk had appeared on both his TV show and podcast. “I talked to him, I liked him,” he said. “I like everybody. I talk to everybody that I think… Um, I’m glad I took that approach.”

Kirk’s death, Maher pointed out, occurred while he was doing exactly what he was known for. “He was shot under a banner that said, ‘Prove me wrong,’ because he was a debater,” Maher explained. “And too many people think the way to do that, to prove you wrong, is to just eliminate you from talking altogether.” Maher didn’t hold back in condemning those who mocked or justified Kirk’s killing. “The people who mocked his death or justified it, I think, ‘You’re gross. I have no use for you,’” he said. “The people who are saying now we’re at war, I have no use for you.” While it was nice for him take this position, he couldn’t help himself and had to sneak in a little of the “both sides” argument that many on the left have been making the past few days. “I think the real war is not between left or right,” he said. “It’s between the people on both sides who want a war and the people who don’t.”

Ben Shapiro, who was close friends with Kirk, offered a personal perspective. “I knew Charlie for 13 years,” Shapiro said, recalling meeting him as a teenager in Palm Beach. “I watched him, you know, grow into a man and watched him, you know, get married and have a couple of very young kids.” Shapiro reminded viewers that Kirk’s work was about engaging with opposing views: “Whatever you thought of Charlie’s views is irrelevant. The fact is that what he made his living doing and what he actually did quite well… was just going and talking to people on the other side. And that’s, you know, what he was killed doing. He was literally in the middle of answering a question and picked up the microphone and was shot in the throat.” The broader issue, Shapiro warned, is a growing cultural acceptance of violence as a response to speech.

“We do have a serious problem in this country with people who believe that violence is the proper response to speech, and that does skew young,” he said. “What the polls tend to show is that of Gen Z, only 58%… believes that there is no excuse for violence in response to speech, meaning that 42% believe that there are some times that… violence ought to be a response.” “That is deeply terrifying,” he added, noting that he has required round-the-clock security for a decade. “Even the assassination of political figures is not the same thing as just being shot in the throat for the crime of debating issues in the public square.” For Shapiro, Kirk’s assassination marked a dark moment in American life. “I thought that that’s not what America is or what it should be about, and we’ve come to some place incredibly dark in our nation’s history,” he said. “And, you know, I weep for the country. I weep for Charlie. It’s, it’s horrific.”

Maher deserves some credit for calling out the ghouls on the left who laughed at or excused Charlie Kirk’s assassination. That kind of honesty is rare in Hollywood, and it’s refreshing to hear someone with his platform say out loud what so many Americans are thinking. I’ve long been critical of Democrats who posture as if they oppose political violence while claiming some moral high ground on the issue. Most of the time, I don’t buy a word of it. But Maher is different. He’s been consistent in warning the left that their rhetoric is toxic and counterproductive. He’s openly pushed back on the lazy habit of calling Trump a Nazi, and he even had dinner with Trump and walked away with decent things to say. That track record gives him credibility where others have none.

Still, his instinct to retreat into the tired “both sides” trope misses the point. The real threat isn’t some abstract culture of division — it’s the left itself, which has made clear it’s at war with anyone who dares to disagree with them. Charlie Kirk was murdered for the simple act of debating ideas in public, and the response from too many progressives has been to cheer or justify it. That tells you everything you need to know. The modern left doesn’t want to win arguments; it wants to silence and destroy the people making them. Kirk’s assassination was an attack not just on one man but on the very foundation of free speech in America.

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St. George, Utah, looks like a crazy place. No wonder it radicalizes people that are young, easily impressionable.

White House Plans Security Boost On Civil Terrorism Fears (ZH)

The Trump administration has sounded the alarm on what we’ve openly described as “civil terrorism” – revolutionary left-wing political violence – following the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. In a sign of urgency, the White House requested an extra $58 million in security funding for the executive and judicial branches, according to a Bloomberg News report. Here’s the threat landscape:
• Kill-List Risks: Kirk’s assassination should be interpreted by America First leaders and thought leaders as the potential beginning of a sequential campaign of targeted political violence. The message is obvious: revolutionary armed Marxist radicals won’t stop at Kirk.
• Overnight Federal Response: The FBI disclosed, as per Axios, that agents have opened investigations into leftist groups believed to have had prior knowledge of the attack. No names were released, but the admission marks a significant concern among investigators. Hence, the White House’s move to request $58 million security boost.
• Organized Conspiracy In Kirk’s Assassination? GPS-based research flagged by analyst Tony Seruga suggests as many as a dozen co-conspirators may have been involved – raising the odds of a coordinated network rather than a lone-wolf incident.

More detail on the White House’s request for a $58 million security boost for top officials (via Bloomberg): The request to include the extra funding in an upcoming stopgap bill comes ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline when the current federal spending law runs out. Punchbowl News first reported on the funding request.

The administration also signaled support for expanding resources to safeguard lawmakers, though it left the specifics of that decision to the legislative branch, the outlet reported. Further detail from Axios’ report on federal and state law enforcement honing in on radical leftist groups that may have been involved in Kirk’s assassination – or at least had prior knowledge of the plan: Between the lines: Federal and state law enforcement officials also are examining leftist groups in Utah to see whether they had knowledge of the alleged shooter’s plans beforehand, or if they lent material support to him afterward. One of those groups eliminated its social media profile after the shooting, Axios has learned.

Latest profiling of the Kirk’s alleged shooter:
Charlie Kirk Assassination Suspect Lived With Transgender Partner, Discord Denies Use
Alleged Kirk Assassin A “Radical Left ANTIFA-Adjacent Creep” Wrote “Hey Fascist” On Bullet Casing

Before the assassination of Kirk, we had already assessed and warned of an emerging radical leftist threat environment with potential threat risks to the Trump administration, America First leadership, and individuals holding any opposing viewpoints to those of the left. There were some indicators of escalation visible well in advance, suggesting that the attack on Kirk could be part of a broader wave and a new era of civil terrorism, versus what was previously thought as an isolated event:

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“She accused the media of bringing “chaos, hatred, division, and anarchy all across this country” and also linked Kirk’s death to “constant hateful rhetoric”..”

Trump Shares Call For ‘Charlie Kirk Act’ To Hold Media Accountable (RT)

US President Donald Trump has shared a video calling for a law that would make media outlets, content creators, and social media networks financially liable for making false claims and unsubstantiated accusations against anyone. The president reposted a short clip on Truth Social that was originally published on TikTok by a woman going by the name Elly May. There, she calls on him and his administration to reinstate the Smith Mundt Act, which, according to her, “held news corporations accountable for lying to the American people and spreading propaganda instead of truth.”

A piece of Cold War-era legislation, the Smith- Mundt Act was aimed at preventing domestic dissemination of US media content intended for foreign audiences, such as from Voice of America or Radio Liberty. Contrary to what May said in her video, it was not repealed under former US President Barack Obama and is still in force. It also has nothing to do with holding US news media accountable for spreading false narratives at home. In the video, May also urged Trump to name it “the Charlie Kirk Act” after the conservative activist murdered this week. She accused the media of bringing “chaos, hatred, division, and anarchy all across this country” and also linked Kirk’s death to “constant hateful rhetoric” he faced online and in the media.

Trump did not comment on May’s video in his repost. A petition of a similar nature launched on Change.org on Saturday got nearly 43,000 signatures in about a day. Directed at Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, it also called on them to introduce strict penalties against news media, content creators, and social networks for spreading “false narratives,” baseless accusations or employing “unfair” censorship. Kirk, 31, the founder of Turning Point USA, was killed while addressing students at a college in Orem, Utah, on Wednesday. A suspect arrested in connection to the case was “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology,” according to Utah Governor Spencer Cox. In the wake of the incident, Trump vowed to pursue not only Kirk’s murderer but also what he called the “radical left” networks that fuel political violence.

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But of course…

Antifa Defaces Memorial For Zarutska and Kirk In Vienna (RT)

Antifa has vandalized and defaced a memorial dedicated to the late conservative commentator Charlie Kirk and Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska in Vienna, Austrian Freisinnige (Freelance) party chairman Christian Ebner said on Sunday. The makeshift memorial had been set up outside the US Embassy in the Austrian capital following the murders, both of which have inflamed partisan divisions in the US. During a vigil for Zarutska and Kirk on Friday, people placed photographs, flowers US flags and letters at the wall of the embassy, and lit candles. The memorial has been vandalized and torn down by Antifa activists as of Sunday, according to Ebner.

https://twitter.com/SebBax7799/status/1966562039762964580

“Antifa vandalized it; these inhumane left-wing extremists don’t even respect a memorial service,” he wrote on X on Sunday. Footage circulating on social media shows black-clad demonstrators chanting slogans as they stand opposite people taking part in the vigil on Friday. According to Austrian influencer Alexander Ehrlich, who was at the vigil, the group interrupted a moment of silence for the two murder victims by chanting slogans. Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, was brutally murdered by career criminal Decarlos Brown Jr. on a North Carolina train last month. The graphic video of the unprovoked stabbing was released by the local transit system last week and went viral.

Conservative influencer Kirk was fatally shot during a public appearance at a Utah university on Wednesday. The murders have sparked intense debate over media bias, public safety, and the increasingly violent culture war, with conservative figures accusing liberal media of ignoring Zarutska’s death until long after it had gone viral on social media. US President Donald Trump has strongly condemned both killings and promised to pursue those he accused of funding and fueling “radical left” political violence in the US. He has also said he would push for the death penalty for both killers.

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“.. hatred of conservatives becomes so normalized that a teacher feels emboldened to show snuff films to children and justify murder in the name of “justice.”

Teacher Forces Students To Watch Charlie Kirk Murder Video (Margolis)

What happened in Toronto last week should send a chill down the spine of every parent, not just in Canada but worldwide. On September 11, a teacher at Corvette Junior Public School in Toronto allegedly showed a classroom of ten- and eleven-year-olds the horrific assassination video of Charlie Kirk. According to a report from the New York Post, the teacher didn’t just show the video once—he played it repeatedly, forcing children to relive the violence over and over while delivering a tirade on “antifascism” and transgender politics, and declaring that Kirk “deserved this fate.” Let that sink in: a public school teacher seized on the brutal murder of a political figure to indoctrinate children, twisting a tragedy into a platform for radical propaganda.

Parents were understandably outraged when their kids came home shaken and traumatized by what they had been put through. Imagine being a child in fifth grade, expecting a normal day at school, only to be subjected to the graphic sight of a man being assassinated—then told the victim somehow earned it. A letter was sent home on Friday to all students affected by the showing of the video, calling the teacher’s alleged behavior “extremely troubling and completely disturbing,” the Toronto Sun reports. “During class, students were said to have been shown a portion of a violent video in response to questions being asked about a recent tragic event in the United States,” read the letter signed by Corvette Junior Public School Principal Jennifer Koptie.

The letter stated that the video was allegedly shown to students in grades 5 and 6 — typically aged 10-11 — by a staff member who was supervising a French immersion class and was not the regular teacher. “While an investigation must still be conducted to learn all of the details, the report of this incident is extremely troubling and completely unacceptable,” the letter continued. “We recognize the seriousness of this matter and have taken immediate steps to follow all appropriate policies and procedures,” Koptie wrote. “The teacher has been relieved of all teaching responsibilities pending the outcome of the investigation and will not be at the school,” the letter continued. Assistance is being offered to any children traumatized by the incident, Koptie said.

This is what the political left does when ideology trumps decency. Instead of treating the murder of a human being as a moment to grieve or counsel, this teacher turned it into a grotesque object lesson in leftist identity-driven politics. A tragedy became a weapon to bludgeon students with lectures on antifascism and gender utopianism. It wasn’t about teaching; it was about grooming young minds to see political opponents as subhuman, their deaths as justified, and their suffering as deserved. Evil like that doesn’t just come out of nowhere. It’s the result of years of cultural decay, where radical politics take precedence over morality, and hatred of conservatives becomes so normalized that a teacher feels emboldened to show snuff films to children and justify murder in the name of “justice.”

What this teacher did to his students is unimaginable, yet at the same time, it’s a reflection of the vile hatred that comes from the left. And sadly, this isn’t an isolated incident. Schools have become battlegrounds where left-wing activists, armed with the language of “equity” and “social justice,” manipulate children into absorbing their worldview. And when tragedies occur, they pounce—not to heal, not to comfort, but to spread hate. Showing elementary school kids the assassination of Charlie Kirk wasn’t a lapse in judgment. It was the inevitable endpoint of an ideology that devalues conservative lives and sanctifies violent resistance against them.

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“Only three to four drones are confirmed to have been shot down. This means that either Poland has possibly the worst air defenses in NATO, or, the reported number of drones is greatly inflated..”

Europe On “High Alert” As Polish Moms Train For War Against Russia (ZH)

A recent incident in Polish airspace involving at least three Russian drones has inspired hysteria in greater Europe (stoked by EU politicians and the media). The event, which involved what appear to be Russian reconnaissance drones, is similar to previous incidents of purported Russian UAVs shot down after crossing into NATO skies. No attacks, no casualties and no clear intent of invasion. However, the presence of these drones in Polish skies, even if their flight path was only meant to take them to Ukraine, is enough to fuel European calls for possible escalation. The EU and UK continue to insist on deployment of “peace keeping” troops to intervene in the Ukraine war, with France, Germany and Britain suggesting boots on the ground to reinforce the now faltering Ukrainian front lines.

The Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, asserts that the drone incursion is part of a Russian plot to “test NATO reactions without triggering a full scale war”. The Polish claim that at least 19 drones were involved in the incursion and that the devices had traveled “hundreds of miles” before they were intercepted. Only three to four drones are confirmed to have been shot down. This means that either Poland has possibly the worst air defenses in NATO, or, the reported number of drones is greatly inflated.

“The drones didn’t reach their targets and there was minor damage to property, nobody was hurt. If it happened in Ukraine, by Ukrainian definitions, that would be regarded as a 100% success,” Silorski said. But the drones had no ordnance attached and there is no evidence that they were targeting anything or anyone. As President Donald Trump noted, the crossing into Poland was more likely a mistake. This response has angered the Europeans, who are desperate for US involvement in the war. Poland’s response has set the country on “high alert”. Troops have been reinforced and the border with Belarus has been closed. The government is now sponsoring voluntary military training for civilians. Open to the public, the training has attracted over 20,000 recruits including Polish mothers, who say they want to “protect their children”.

The idea is logical enough, though the deployment of women for front line combat is generally an act of desperation rather than sound strategic policy. It is interesting that a country which practices strict gun control and eligibility requirements for citizens is suddenly so interested in using those citizens as a militia reserve against a hypothetical Russian invasion. Ukraine suffered from similar restrictions on its citizens before they were invaded and this stunted their defensive capabilities. EU officials say the drone event is an “aggressive, reckless act” and is “part of a serious escalation by Russia,” only reinforcing the bloc’s “support and resolve to support Ukraine.” The problem, though, is a matter off logistical realities.

Europe’s contributions to NATO defenses are minimal and the vast majority of military spending has long been covered by US taxpayers. Europe’s ability to manufacture the weapons needed to fight a prolonged conflict with Russia is next to nil and the means to supply their forces with enough equipment and resources to engage in an attrition war does not exist. The US military is the only force with the resources to manage a long term war in Ukraine, which is why the EU continues to demand that the Trump Administration commit to escalation. European officials have been encouraging Volodymyr Zelensky’s ambitions to take back lost Ukrainian territory with talk of potential EU troops. This has extended the life of the war and sabotaged efforts to organize diplomatic talks. Currently, Russian forces are surging on the Eastern front and Ukraine is facing the loss of the entire Donbas region. Central Ukraine is also at risk as Ukrainian troop strength dwindles. Analysts outside of typical western propaganda networks argue that Ukraine is facing a total loss unless a resolution is achieved in the near future.

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“Economic interdependence and ideological constraints ensure that problems not only go unsolved but reinforce each other.”

France Is Only The Front Line In A Crisis Gripping The G7 (Lukyanov)

France is once again in crisis. Francois Bayrou’s government failed to win a vote of confidence in the National Assembly and has resigned. President Emmanuel Macron has promised to quickly propose another candidate. But after calling early elections last spring, he created a parliament with no stable majority. Now he must try to form a cabinet for the third time in little more than a year. If he fails, new elections will follow, and this time not even Macron’s usual tricks may save him. Both the far right and the far left have been waiting for this moment, sharpening their teeth for the embattled president for years.The spectacle in Paris is not unique. It is part of a wider malaise across the political systems of the G7.

In Japan, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba long insisted he would not step down. Yet his party’s losses in two parliamentary elections left him no choice. In Britain, a scandal forced the resignation of the deputy prime minister and left the Labour Party floundering at approval levels no better than the discredited Conservatives. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party now leads in the polls. In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz is recording record-low ratings while the anti-establishment Alternative for Germany remains stable at CDU levels.Italy and Canada are steadier, but barely. Canada’s Liberals were rescued not by their own strength but by Donald Trump. His coarse attacks on Ottawa provided a rally-round-the-flag effect, sparing them a near-certain defeat.

The result was continuity in power, though with Mark Carney replacing Justin Trudeau. As for the United States itself, the picture is clear enough: Trump’s supporters face little resistance. His opponents are simply lying low, waiting for better times. Each of these cases has local causes, yet together they reveal something larger. For countries with deep democratic traditions, turmoil is not new. They have endured crises before. But the simultaneity of today’s upheavals makes this moment extraordinary. The world is in open unrest, and no major power is insulated. The question is not whether the turbulence will continue, but how well political systems can withstand the waves.

Here there is a crucial difference between the United States and its allies, on the one hand, and the European Union on the other. The US, Canada, Britain, and Japan remain sovereign states. Their degree of sovereignty can be debated, but their governments retain legitimacy and can act quickly when circumstances demand it. Those decisions may be good or bad, but they are at least their own, and they can change course if the results prove ineffective. For the EU states, the situation is different. Their sovereignty is deliberately limited by the framework of European integration. In the second half of the 20th century, this was the Union’s great strength: by pooling authority, its members gained leverage they could never have achieved alone. But the same framework now acts as a brake. In a world where speed of decision is vital, Brussels makes it harder, not easier, to act.

Economic interdependence and ideological constraints ensure that problems not only go unsolved but reinforce each other. Worse, there is no vision of how the system might be changed under current institutional rules. As a result, rather than rethink course, leaders try to bulldoze through with even more energy in the same direction. Opposition forces are excluded even when they win elections. And the Ukrainian issue has been turned into the central pillar of EU politics. Should that issue fade, a mass of uncomfortable domestic questions will come to the surface – and Western Europe’s rulers know it.

Manipulation and muddling through remain possible, of course. France and Germany may once again stagger past their current difficulties. But each time it becomes harder, and the gap between society’s demands and the establishment’s interests grows wider. This is why the “moment of truth” for EU politics is approaching. No one can predict what follows. The bloc will not return to the pre-integration era. But the political forces cast as outsiders today may soon be the ones defining the new order.

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“..it makes little sense to get stuck once again reiterating what a very dubious figure Robinson cuts. Instead, let’s focus on why he is capable of causing such a stir.”

‘Unite The Kingdom’ Is a Harbinger of a Western European Cataclysm (Amar)

Seen from its former empire, riots in Great Britain may look wretchedly atavistic. Not to speak of a tiny bit of Schadenfreude. For the Times of India, the recent Unite the Kingdom rally and riots have turned London “into a stage for Britain’s anxieties.” And not just anxieties. While many protesters remained peaceful, there also was, in best old English tradition, some energetic fighting: Kicks, fists, and bottles flew as if at a football match or late at night outside a not-yet-gentrified pub around last call. There ended up being 26 police officers injured and 25 protesters arrested. For now. The authorities have promised to catch even more. Clearly so as to make an example of the uppity ruffians and keep the rest of the common people in check. That, too, is good old English tradition.

Organized by “far-right activist” (The Hindu) Tommy Robinson (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), Unite the Kingdom was billed as a “free speech” demonstration, but its real and explicit core agenda was a protest against immigration and Islam (or rather the daft, mean caricature of Islam that Robinson and his followers propagate). Still a fairly young man at 42 years of age, Robinson has a well-known and ingloriously petty criminal record: assault, passport and mortgage fraud; yet another conviction, for contempt of court, was arguably political. He also has stacked up serious credentials as a right-wing influencer, organizer, and troublemaker. None of that, however, has stopped him or is ever likely to do him any political harm. On the contrary, just as with other recent break-out figures – Trump in the forefront – the very deserved bad-boy rep is only making him stronger.

Unfortunately, even Robinson’s aggressive siding with genocidal Israel (his really unforgivable crime, in my book) – a pattern now common with the far right in the West – and plausible assessments that he is functioning as a “Zionist asset” (and benefitting from it) won’t hurt him. Even if it sits extremely, comically badly with his constant complaining about foreigners subverting Britain. That is just the horribly corrupt way the West is now. And to be fair, in that respect, Robinson is de facto as mainstream as the whole ruling Labour Party and the rest of Britain’s establishment, too, from BBC to NHS. That’s why, here, it makes little sense to get stuck once again reiterating what a very dubious figure Robinson cuts. Instead, let’s focus on why he is capable of causing such a stir. That will tell us much about the current state of Britain and the West more broadly.

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“US President Donald Trump, the “most influential man in the world..”

EU Must Mend Relations With Trump – Kallas (RT)

The EU must improve relations with US President Donald Trump, the “most influential man in the world,” and adapt to his way of doing business and politics, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has said. Kallas made the remarks in an interview with German outlet RND published on Friday. She was asked whether the EU can still trust Trump after a much-criticized trade deal that imposed a 15% tariff on most exports from the bloc while lifting tariffs on US industrial goods. The deal, which also involved shifting from Russian energy to US imports, sparked backlash from EU officials, who said it favors Washington.

“The US is and remains our most important partner. But the new administration has clearly changed how it conducts policy and official business. We Europeans must adapt and adjust to their way of working,” Kallas said, adding that Trump’s tariffs have become a “new benchmark for how well a country gets along with the US.” “Trump is the most influential man in the world… We simply have to learn how to work with him.” Kallas also said any settlement of the Ukraine conflict is unlikely without Trump’s involvement, claiming that only the US “has the power to force Russia into serious peace negotiations.” She expressed hope that Trump will follow through on earlier threats and impose further sanctions on Moscow.

Russia has not been targeted with US tariffs due to the existing sanctions, but Trump has threatened tariffs on its trade partners if the Ukraine conflict is not resolved quickly. Last month, he doubled the tariffs on India to 50%, accusing it of aiding Moscow by buying Russian oil and defense equipment, and hinted at new measures against China. This week, Trump signaled that he could further sanction Russia if NATO members stop buying its oil, arguing that the military bloc’s commitment to Ukraine peace efforts is insufficient. Russia has denounced the Western sanctions as illegal, and has said it is open to talks on Ukraine, but stressed that any peace deal must address the root causes of the conflict and include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and recognition of the new territorial realities.

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What do you mean you don’t want to go to war? We try so hard..

EU NATO Members Displeased With US Reaction To ‘Russian Drone Incursion’ (RT)

European NATO states are reportedly ‘dismayed and confused’ by Washington’s reaction to an alleged Russian drone incursion into Polish airspace, according to Reuters. Some members of the bloc view US President Donald Trump’s reluctance to outright blame Moscow for the incident on Wednesday as a sign that he is not committed enough to their defense, the news agency reported on Saturday, citing unnamed European officials. US aircraft also played no role in repelling the alleged attack, according to Reuters. US officials said it was because the Dutch military was responsible for Polish airspace within NATO at the time.

“Trump’s handling of the incident has ranged from dismay to confusion and unease,” Reuters said. A German official told the news agency that European NATO members “cannot rely on anything” with the Trump administration.An Eastern European diplomat called Washington’s “silence” on the matter “almost deafening,” while an Italian official told Reuters that NATO members were mostly displeased with the US reaction. The Polish government stated that its military tracked at least 19 alleged violations of its airspace by Russian drones over a seven-hour period on Wednesday, describing the episode as “deliberate” and “unprecedented.” It also convened an emergency UN Security Council meeting over the incident.

Trump downplayed the accusations, suggesting that the alleged incident “could have been a mistake.” He also said he was “not happy about anything having to do with that whole situation” and expressed hope that it would just “come to an end.” Moscow responded by saying Warsaw’s claims were not supported by evidence and hyped up by the “European party of war.” Drones used in strikes against Ukrainian military targets could not “physically” reach Polish territory, Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, said. European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, condemned the alleged incursion as “reckless” and expressed solidarity with Poland.

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There are no finances. There’s only a gap.

IMF Warns Of Major Gap In Ukraine’s Finances – Bloomberg (RT)

Ukraine faces a growing funding gap that could require billions more in outside support to finance its conflict with Russia, Bloomberg has reported, citing sources from the International Monetary Fund. Ukraine, which spends around 60% of its budget on the conflict, relies heavily on Western assistance to cover pensions, public wages, essential services, debt, and humanitarian needs. It obtained a $15.5 billion loan from the IMF in early 2023 to cover some of the expenses and has already received around $10.6 billion, but the financing program was based on the assumption that the conflict would end this year and expires in 2027.

Kiev requested a new funding plan earlier this week, estimating that it will need up to $37.5 billion over the next two years if the conflict continues. But according to the Bloomberg report on Thursday, the IMF believes Ukraine may need $10-20 billion more than this, raising the total to $57.5 billion. IMF spokeswoman Julie Kozack confirmed on Thursday that the agency has begun talks with Kiev on a new support program, but did not acknowledge the reported shortfall. Sources told Bloomberg that Kiev and the IMF are expected to settle on a figure for the new loan next week. Ukraine’s cabinet and Finance Ministry declined to comment on the report.

Ukraine has struggled to secure new aid from its main backers. US contributions have dwindled since President Donald Trump’s return to office, leaving the EU as the biggest donor. One method pursued by the West has been to use profits from the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets abroad. Last year, the G7 backed a $50 billion loan plan to be repaid from these earnings.Some Western countries have called for the full confiscation of Russian assets, while others warn of legal risks. Nevertheless, the profits have already been tapped, with the EU, which pledged $21 billion under the program, disbursing roughly half of the amount so far this year.Russia has warned that financial and military aid to Ukraine only prolongs the conflict and has denounced the use of frozen assets as “robbery” which violates international law and erodes trust in the Western financial system.

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Nov 262022
 
 November 26, 2022  Posted by at 9:08 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Sheperd and sheperdess in a meadow 1888

 

A Light in the Darkness (Jim Kunstler)
Twitter Has Lost 50 Of Its Top 100 Advertisers Since Elon Musk Took Over (NPR)
Antifa Plans To Burn Down Tesla Outlets Following Twitter Bans (Cheong)
Elon Musk: I’ll Make An Alternative Phone If Apple, Google Ban Twitter (PM)
Putin Expresses Regret Over Donbass (RT)
UK Urges Ukraine To ‘Maintain Momentum’ In Winter (RT)
Ending NATO and Correcting Stalin’s Mistake (Batiushka)
Ukrainian Troops Used As ‘Cannon Fodder’ – Putin (RT)
Moscow Won’t Declare Ukraine ‘Terrorist State’ (RT)
China Dissuaded US From Ukraine Warplane Plan – Spectator (RT)
The Ukraine Is Committing “Suicide By Cop” (Saker)
On Ukrainian ‘Refugees’ (Batiushka)
The Economist: Gas & Energy Prices To Lead To Surge In Deaths In Europe (RT)
J6 Staff Lash Out at Liz Cheney for Burying Parts of the Investigation (Turley)
Louisiana AG: Fauci ‘Can’t Recall’ Details Of His COVID-19 Response (JTN)

 

 

 

 

 

 

November 25th – Utter nonsense in Ukraine – Macgregor

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I think Elon Musk is right: the Mainstream News Media will now face a venue where its habitual lying is called out forcefully..”

A Light in the Darkness (Jim Kunstler)

It’s hard to overstate how damaging Twitter’s dark years of insidiously massaging public opinion have been to this country. Open debate could have clarified the fog of deliberate disinformation surrounding everything Covid-19. It would have been much harder for public health officialdom to gaslight America over the origin of the disease, and probably impossible to conceal the nefarious operations behind the Emergency Use Authorization, the suppression of effective early treatments, and the direct ties to drug companies’ profits. The result of that has been the broad deployment of dangerous and deadly pseudo-vaccines that have killed millions and disabled many more. The absence of honest debate has turned doctors into murderers and accomplices to genocide.

The scope of this bureaucratic crime is really outside the experience of most Americans, who never imagined that their elected and appointed leaders would act against them with such rank dishonesty, cruelty, and bad faith. But there it is. And if Twitter continues to open up, the more likely that the responsible parties will be held accountable. Likewise, the now-pervasive Kafka-esque program of political persecution carried out against citizens by government officials, including the many seditious schemes of RussiaGate; the ongoing, escalating mischief around elections; and the use of the FBI and DOJ as a combined secret police and kangaroo court apparatus.

You can add to all that turpitude, the wild irresponsibility of “Joe Biden’s” open border policy, our idiotic provocation of Russia in Ukraine, the surrender of America’s national sovereignty to the globalist Great Re-set cabal and its tools in the World Health Organization, and the domestic campaign by Woke Jacobins to sexually disorder the lives of American children. I think Elon Musk is right: the Mainstream News Media will now face a venue where its habitual lying is called out forcefully. You can already see The WashPo and CNN attempt to make small shifts in their coverage of events, which double as efforts to cover-up their past lying in the hopes that the public won’t notice that it happened.

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On a much smaller scale, TAE suffers from the same practices.

Twitter Has Lost 50 Of Its Top 100 Advertisers Since Elon Musk Took Over (NPR)

Half of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers appear to no longer be advertising on the website. A report from Media Matters for America states that these 50 advertisers have spent almost $2 billion on Twitter ads since 2020 and more than $750 million just in 2022. Seven additional advertisers have slowed their advertising to almost nothing, according to the report, which was published on Tuesday. These companies have paid Twitter more than $255 million since 2020. Chevrolet, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., Ford, Jeep, Kyndryl, Merck & Co. and Novartis AG all issued statements about halting Twitter ads or were reported and confirmed as doing so. The others ceased advertising on the platform for a “significant period of time following direct outreach, controversies, and warnings from media buyers.”

The report wrote that even with these hits to advertising revenue, Twitter CEO Elon Musk has “continued his rash of brand unsafe actions — including amplifying conspiracy theories, unilaterally reinstating banned accounts such as that of former President Donald Trump, courting and engaging with far-right accounts, and instituting a haphazard verification scheme that allowed extremists and scammers to purchase a blue check.” Twitter users like author Stephen King have criticized the new blue checkmark system. The symbol used to verify the identity of Twitter accounts, so it was easy to confirm a tweet’s source. Eli Lilly and Co. stopped showing ads on Twitter the day after an account impersonating the pharmaceutical company — complete with a purchased blue check mark — posted, “We are excited to announce insulin is free now.”

Eli Lilly asked Twitter to take it down, but the tweet remained up for hours, because the platform’s staff was stretched thin due to recent layoffs and resignations. The tweet garnered hundreds of retweets and thousands of likes, and Eli Lilly’s stock soon took a dive. Endpoints News reported that 12 pharmaceutical giants soon stopped buying Twitter ads, citing Pathmatics, which collects data on corporate advertising and digital marketing trends. King quipped on Twitter, “Pretty soon the only advertiser left on Twitter will be My Pillow.” The pillow-manufacturing company is run by pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell.

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“This is just a drop in the ocean of years of violent organizing on Twitter..”

Antifa Plans To Burn Down Tesla Outlets Following Twitter Bans (Cheong)

Following his takeover of Twitter, “Chief Twit” Elon Musk has quickly begun to address many of the platform’s problems. Musk, who intends for Twitter to be a platform for legal free speech, has moved to crack down on terrorists and violent far-left extremists who have for many years been a fixture on Twitter and used it to organize riots. Now Tesla, which Musk owns, has become the target of violent retaliation by far-left militants angered by the suspension of their accounts. This week, Musk moved to ban a pro-Palestinian “resistance” group called “Jisr Collective,” which promoted and celebrated terrorist acts against Israeli civilians. In a separate thread, Musk called for members of the public to report violations of the site’s terms of service against child sexual exploitation and far-left extremist violence.

Numerous self-identified Antifa militants including several prominent organizers have been banned for calling for violence against Chaya Raichik, who operates the popular “Libs of TikTok” account, and Daily Wire host Matt Walsh. “Incitement to violence will result in account suspension,” said Musk in response to journalist Andy Ngo, who explained that a large number of Antifa accounts operate on the website to promote riots and provide tips to each other on how to identify targets and commit violence. Ngo detailed how following his reporting on members of the loosely-knit far-left militant organization, he was chased down and beaten up, forcing him to seek refuge at a Portland hotel in 2021. “Antifa used Twitter to direct comrades to swarm me after I ran into a hotel following a violent street beating,” wrote Ngo.

“That is a disturbing story and very concerning that Twitter took no action, despite clear violation of ToS. Report in this thread for now,” replied Musk, prompting numerous users to provide him with clear examples of militants in violation of the site’s rules against threats and intimidation. Many of the users reported on the thread were banned several hours after being reported to Musk, suggesting that he took direct action to shut down their accounts. Hours after the bans, Antifa militants took to the social media platform to organize arson attacks on Tesla locations around the United States, posting the addresses of Tesla service centers and dealerships. “As revenge for [Elon Musk] suspending violent extremist accounts on Twitter, [Antifa] in Portland are organizing arson attacks on [Tesla] locations tonight,” reported Ngo, who provided screenshots of the calls to action. “This is just a drop in the ocean of years of violent organizing on Twitter,” he added.

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“App store fees are obviously too high due to the iOS/Android duopoly. It is a hidden 30 percent tax on the Internet.”

Elon Musk: I’ll Make An Alternative Phone If Apple, Google Ban Twitter (PM)

On Friday, Twitter owner Elon Musk, who also is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said that if Twitter is removed from app stores owned by Apple and Google, whose phones only use those systems, he would create an alternative phone. Liz Wheeler wrote, “If Apple & Google boot Twitter from their app stores, @elonmusk should produce his own smartphone. Half the country would happily ditch the biased, snooping iPhone & Android. The man builds rockets to Mars, a silly little smartphone should be easy, right?” Musk replied, “I certainly hope it does not come to that, but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone.” On Friday, Taylor Lorenz used her latest column in the Washington Post to call for Apple and Google app stores to pull Twitter from their stores.

This came after Musk announced that there will be a general amnesty for all banned accounts, following a poll of Twitter users.. Lorenz complains that Musk brought back conservative Christian satire site The Babylon Bee, who was banned by noting that Rachel Levine is a biological male. After Time Magazine awarded Levine “woman of the year,” The Babylon Bee awarded Levine “man of the year.” On November 18, Musk noted how Apple and Google through their vertical integration have a duopoly on the market and wrote, “App store fees are obviously too high due to the iOS/Android duopoly. It is a hidden 30 percent tax on the Internet.” Musk followed up and tagged the antitrust division in the Department of Justice.

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“If not for the coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, none [of this] would have happened..”

Putin Expresses Regret Over Donbass (RT)

The Donbass republics should probably have rejoined Russia sooner, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with the mothers of troops involved in the military operation in Ukraine on Friday. In such a case, fewer lives might have been lost, the president stressed. “There might not have been so many casualties among civilians, there would not be so many children killed,” the Russian leader suggested. He maintained, however, that back in 2014, Russia did not have a full understanding of the situation in Donbass or of the true sentiments of the locals. “[We] believed that we might still be able to reach an agreement and … reunify Donetsk and Lugansk with Ukraine within … the Minsk Agreements,” Putin noted, adding that Russia was “genuinely working towards that.”

Commenting on the matter further, the president blamed the 2014 coup in Kiev for the subsequent crisis in Donbass and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. “If not for the coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014, none [of this] would have happened,” he said. Brokered by Germany and France, the Minsk Agreements were first signed in 2014 in the wake of the ousting of then-President Viktor Yanukovich, which plunged Ukraine into a conflict between the post-coup government in Kiev and the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Having subsequently become the respective people’s republics, the territories declared their independence from Ukraine the same year. The accords were designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state.

Yet, their implementation was stalled – something Moscow repeatedly blamed on Kiev. Former Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the deal to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.” In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. On February 24, Russia sent troops into Ukraine, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements. Putin spoke at that time of the need to protect the Russian-speaking population of Donbass. This autumn, four formerly Ukrainian territories, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, were incorporated into Russia following referendums.

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“..the international community” has provided Kiev with “300,000 pieces of arctic warfare kit.”

UK Urges Ukraine To ‘Maintain Momentum’ In Winter (RT)

UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has called on Ukraine to “keep up the pressure” on Russian forces in the coming months, arguing that Kiev is well-prepared to fight in freezing conditions. Wallace made the remarks in an interview with The Daily Beast on Thursday. The defense secretary suggested that Kiev’s forces had the advantage “in equipment training and [the] quality of their personnel” over Russian troops. With this in mind, “it would be in Ukraine’s interest to maintain momentum through the winter,” he said, adding that “the international community” has provided Kiev with “300,000 pieces of arctic warfare kit.”

Wallace’s comments come after US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin warned that Ukraine might be about to face a “harsh winter,” as the country is reeling under Russian strikes on its infrastructure. Moscow has been targeting Ukrainian energy facilities since October 10, after accusing Kiev of attacking Russian structures, including the strategic Crimean Bridge. Due to these strikes, Ukraine has been experiencing rolling blackouts, with Ukrainian authorities saying that these attacks knocked out about 40% of the nation’s energy infrastructure. However, by urging Ukraine to push on, the British defense secretary is contradicting earlier statements made by General Mark Milley, who heads the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, as he warned that Ukraine’s chances of “kicking the Russians out of all” of the country were low.

The top US general also indicated that the upcoming winter was a diplomatic opportunity for Kiev. “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it. Seize the moment,” he said. At the same time, US President Joe Biden said last week that he expected the ongoing conflict in Ukraine to “slow down” in winter due to the “inability to move as easily around the country”while vowing to continue supporting Kiev. Moscow has repeatedly stated that it is open to negotiations with Kiev. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, however, has listed several conditions for any dialogue with Russia, including the “restoration of [Ukraine’s] territorial integrity,” “compensation for all war damage,” and the “punishment of every war criminal.”

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“..today it is in the Warsaws of the ‘New Europe’, far from the North Atlantic, that you will find the most fanatical latecomer-devotees of NATO..”

Ending NATO and Correcting Stalin’s Mistake (Batiushka)

Judging by its name, NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was only ever about the USA and the UK, an agreement between Americans and the half-American Churchill. After all, what relevance does the ‘North Atlantic’ have to Baltic Germany or Mediterranean Italy, let alone to Aegean Greece and Black Sea Turkey? Even Spain and Portugal look towards the Caribbean and the South Atlantic, not to the North Atlantic. NATO is clearly an organisation that descended directly from the Atlantic Charter, made up by Roosevelt and Churchill in a bay off Newfoundland in 1941 (not even in the Atlantic), and then imposed on all the others.

So, whatever was the North Atlantic doing in the foothills of the Himalayas, in Afghanistan? Apart from the fact that that was its greatest defeat (so far), just what was it doing there? And what is the North Atlantic, or at least parts of it, doing in the South China Sea? Surely there is a clue in the name – China? It belongs to China. Whatever are the US Navy and others doing there? Surely, even the geographically-challenged Liz Truss, who wanted the whole world to be ruled by NATO, must have been thinking that it was time to rename NATO? Perhaps the Nazi American Tyranny Organisation? Like that you could keep the same initials. As the Saker has pointed out, the first NATO Secretary-General, the Indian-born colonial, General Hastings (1) Ismay, bluntly admitted that the purpose of NATO was ‘to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’ (2).

And as the Saker has explained: ‘Keep the Germans down’ means crush all Europeans who might be rivals to the Anglosphere’s control of Western Europe, and now control all of Europe, apart from the free Russian Lands. ‘Keep the Americans in’ means crush all European liberation movements, De Gaulle’s or any others. ‘Keep the Soviet Union out’ means destroy Russia, so that it does not liberate Europe from the tyranny of the Anglosphere. The latter is symbolised by the US and British flags that have been omnipresent, even on fashion items, T-shirts and jeans, ever since the 1960s. That is why true Europeans refuse to wear such items.

In reality, it is obvious that NATO should have been packed away on 1 July 1991, the day the Warsaw Pact was packed away. If it had been packed away in 1991, the NATO rout would have been avoided thirty years later in Afghanistan. Indeed, the fact that it was not packed away then is a tragedy which has cost millions of lives, especially all over the tragic Middle East, and today all over the tragic Ukraine. Interestingly, the answer to the aggression and bullying of NATO (the American elite always bullies), the Warsaw Pact was named after the Capital of Poland. Ironically – and there is nothing so ironic as history – today it is in the Warsaws of the ‘New Europe’, far from the North Atlantic, that you will find the most fanatical latecomer-devotees of NATO. What is the significance of NATO?

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“..we are dealing with a neo-Nazi regime, without any exaggerations.”

Ukrainian Troops Used As ‘Cannon Fodder’ – Putin (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Russia is not fighting against the people of Ukraine, but against those who would use them as cannon fodder in the ongoing military conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Speaking to the mothers of Russian servicemen on Friday, the president said that those who supply Ukraine with weapons and fund the Kiev government have no consideration for Ukraine’s losses. Meanwhile, those who do not fall in line with orders are executed on the spot right in front of their comrades, Putin added. “Our boys have seen this firsthand. The bodies of the executed are just left to lie there. Just recently there was another case – five people were shot right in front of the lineup, those who refused to go or left their positions,” the president said.

He appeared to be referring to an incident reported by Russia’s Defense Ministry last week, in which Kiev allegedly sent nationalist militants into the village of Belogorovka to “put things in order” and intimidate Ukrainian servicemen, a number of whom had refused to follow orders and were shot. “There is a completely different moral atmosphere [in Kiev’s forces],” Putin noted, adding that this once again confirmed that “we are dealing with a neo-Nazi regime, without any exaggerations.” The president said that in light of such a situation, Moscow is further reassured it is doing the right thing by protecting the people who live in the territories that have recently joined the Russian Federation. Last month, Russia incorporated the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the former Ukrainian regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, after these territories held referendums on seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.” In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.

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“The doctrine of ‘state terrorism’ is exploited by the US and other Western countries to justify interfering in the internal affairs of others, which violates the UN Charter..”

Moscow Won’t Declare Ukraine ‘Terrorist State’ (RT)

Russia will not designate Ukraine a “terrorist state” despite “outrageous” breaches of international humanitarian law by Kiev, Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov told journalists on Friday. Moscow rejects any doctrine that suggests a nation can be declared “terrorist” and sees no reason to adhere to this “flawed” policy that is used by the West, he said. The doctrine of ‘state terrorism’ is exploited by the US and other Western countries to justify interfering in the internal affairs of others, which violates the UN Charter, the deputy minister noted. It is also used to “legitimize their unilateral coercive measures violating the principle of sovereign equality of all nations,” Syromolotov added.

Russia has always considered such unilateral sanctions “unacceptable,” the high-ranking diplomat stressed. Terrorism as a criminal act always involves individual criminal responsibility of those involved in making attacks, Syromolotov explained, adding that only individuals and not entire nations can be held accountable in such cases. Designating Ukraine a terrorist state now would be “legally flawed” in nature, he explained. The diplomat also blasted a recent resolution by the EU parliament that called Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism,” saying this was part of an “information and political campaign waged by the West against our nation,” one which had nothing to do with the real fight against this international threat.

Amid the ongoing conflict with Russia, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly referred to Russia as a “terrorist” state and called on other nations – particularly in the West – to designate it as such. In mid-October, he asked the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly to do so before it adopted a relevant resolution. Zelensky once again urged the “world” to recognize Russia as a “terrorist state” earlier this week. However, Washington, Ukraine’s top military backer in the conflict, has been reluctant to meet Kiev’s request so far. On Tuesday, US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice Beth Van Schaack said that the country simply could not designate Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” as it does not meet the relevant criteria.

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“Warsaw announced that it would transfer the jets to US forces at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Hours after this announcement, the Pentagon stopped the transfer, describing the Polish proposal as “not tenable.”

China Dissuaded US From Ukraine Warplane Plan – Spectator (RT)

China pressed the US into abandoning a plan to supply Ukraine with Polish warplanes in March, according to a report in the Spectator on Friday. Throughout the conflict, Beijing has pressed both sides to de-escalate, the report claimed. Two weeks after Russian troops entered Ukraine in late February, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly stated that Washington had given its NATO allies a “green light” to supply Ukraine with Soviet-era fighter jets its pilots could use, and that it was working on a deal where Poland would transfer its fleet of MiG-29 fighters to Kiev. Within days, Warsaw announced that it would transfer the jets to US forces at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Hours after this announcement, the Pentagon stopped the transfer, describing the Polish proposal as “not tenable.”

China was directly responsible for this about-turn, The Spectator report claimed. Citing an unnamed Chinese source, writer Owen Matthews described how “an urgent and confidential back-channel initiative involving former European leaders” began. This initiative was “ultimately endorsed by the Chinese,” and Washington backed down. Nearly nine months later, NATO has still not provided Ukraine with fighter jets, despite intense lobbying from Kiev. China’s efforts to prevent escalation went both ways, the report claimed. While Beijing pressed the US into stopping the transfer of warplanes, its generals reportedly phoned their Russian colleagues for assurances that Moscow would stick to its long-standing nuclear doctrine: that it reserves the right to use atomic weapons in the event of a first nuclear strike on its territory or infrastructure, or if the existence of the Russian state is threatened by either nuclear or conventional weapons.

China’s position on Ukraine remains a neutral one. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi declared last week that Beijing stands ready to work with Russia “and other like-minded countries to promote the development of a multipolar world,” and according to Matthews’ report, Beijing and Moscow signed a limited mutual defense pact earlier this year. Nevertheless, China has not sold military hardware to Russia, and its diplomats continue to publicly call for a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

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“..now they are going to pay a horrible price for these delusions and, frankly, lack of decency/morality.”

The Ukraine Is Committing “Suicide By Cop” (Saker)

Yesterday I received an email from a Ukrainian friend of mine. By “Ukrainian” I mean that his culture and self-identity is Ukrainian, he loves his heritage, speaks the language and loves his country. In fact, he is what I would call a “real Ukrainian” as opposed to the Ukronazis in power in Kiev. We correspond regularly and exchange opinions on what is taking place. Here is and excerpt of what I wrote to him yesterday: “I am also heartbroken with the evolution of the war to liberate the Ukraine from NATO: while I have no doubts about the outcome, I am horrified at the thought of what this does to the civilian population. My sadness is even made deeper by the realization that to a large degree the people of the Ukraine did it to themselves.

Russia tried REALLY HARD to not have a war, then she tried REALLY HARD to save the civilians and the civilian infrastructure. But the people under Nazi occupation believed all the propaganda coming out of the regime in Kiev and the West and now there will be hell to pay. For 6 months these naive people thought the Ukraine was winning because they could not even fathom that Russia was only using about 10% of her forces and trying really hard to save as many Ukrainians. But no, they were celebrating the murder of Dugina, the attack on the Crimean Bridge, the attacks on the ZNPP and now they are going to pay a horrible price for these delusions and, frankly, lack of decency/morality.

As Douglas MacGregor said “the Russians are about to bring a sledge-hammer” to vaporize the NATO forces in the Ukraine. We did not want that. It was imposed on us. What else can I say? The Nazis will be crushed, but the costs of doing so will be needlessly high. Millions of refugees will be added to the millions who already fled. I feel utterly disgusted, sad and angry about this outcome As one Rock song I know (“Gates of Babylon” by Rainbow – see below) says: “sleep with the devil, and then you must pay, sleep with the devil and the devil will take you away“. I am sad to say that I believe that the people of the Ukraine did “sleep with the devil” (the West) and now comes the inevitable.

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“As for the Ukrainians, they call Russians ‘moskali’ (Muscovites) and the Russians call Ukrainians ‘khokhly’. A ‘moskal’ is also a bigoted Great Russian chauvinist with a superiority complex, who despises provincials in the Ukraine who used to have a certain hairstyle called a ‘khokhol’ (literally a forelock, a style revived by some hair-conscious Ukrainian nationalists today). However, as a very good half-Polish, half-Ukrainian friend explained to me years ago: ‘Ukrainians live in the Ukraine, khokhly (plural of khokhol) live anywhere they can’. What he meant by this is that the lowest sort of Ukrainians are not patriots at all..”

On Ukrainian ‘Refugees’ (Batiushka)

[..] most of the best Ukrainians, the real and honourable Ukrainians, have stayed in the Ukraine. Of all the ‘refugees’ I have met so far (and that must be over 100), I have not yet met one who is authentic. Whether by unintended consequence or by design, the Russian Federation is very successfully ‘dekhohklifying’ the Ukraine. Russia is successfully emptying the Ukraine of the lowest and most unprincipled layer of parasites, the khokhly. The population of the Ukraine is already down to fewer than 30 million – so far. More are leaving every day, streaming into Poland The khokhly go westwards. Let Western Europe take them, the rubbish. The good ones will stay. A few months ago I still thought that Russia would just free the Donbass, as it announced last February and also take the land-bridge of Zaporozhie and Kherson to protect the Crimea from the Nazis, who were turning off the water supply from there.

Then I realised that Russia would have to go further, simply because the West was supplying the Kiev regime with shells and missiles that were falling not just on the liberated areas, but even in southern Russia. Today it seems to me that Russia will have to liberate the whole of the Ukraine, even as far as Lvov and the border with Poland. Why not, if the trouble-making khokhly have gone and are bankrupting Western social security systems with their parasitic sponging? Why should the treacherous Poles get anything out of this? The Poles rejoiced when the UK blew up Nordstream and then tried to start World War III, blaming a murderous Ukrainian missile on Russians. Let them pay for the consequences. If the Nazis are either all dead or living in the EU, there is no reason for Russia to stop in the Donbass, or Kiev, or even Lvov.

Liberate right up to the Polish border, freeing freezing Non-NATO Moldova on the way and stopping only there, at the Romanian border. Maybe let the Romanians have back North Bukovina (Chernivtsy) and the nice Hungarians have (the to-be-renamed) Zakarpattia. As for the rest: Winner takes all. Russia may now take all of the Ukraine because all the Nazi khokhly will have left for stupid Western Europe. It will have a nice straight border then. It is not a question of how many Ukrainian ‘refugees’ will go back. It is a question of how many of them Russia will allow back. The answer is very few.

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“..the increase in deaths might be limited to 32,000 above the historical average (accounting for changes in population). A harsh winter could cost a total of 335,000 extra lives.”

The Economist: Gas & Energy Prices To Lead To Surge In Deaths In Europe (RT)

Rising electricity prices, bad weather conditions and epidemics will affect the increase in deaths in Europe this coming winter, Report informs referring to The Economist. Although heatwaves get more press, cold temperatures are usually deadlier than hot ones. Between December and February, 21% more Europeans die per week than from June to August. The relationship between energy prices and winter deaths could change this year. But if past patterns persist, current electricity prices would drive deaths above the historical average even in the mildest winter. Exact mortality totals still depend on other factors, particularly temperature. In a mild winter, the increase in deaths might be limited to 32,000 above the historical average (accounting for changes in population). A harsh winter could cost a total of 335,000 extra lives.

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“But when [the committee] became a Cheney 2024 campaign, many of us became discouraged.”

J6 Staff Lash Out at Liz Cheney for Burying Parts of the Investigation (Turley)

There is a deepening division on the J6 Committee as staffers turn on Liz Cheney over the final report on the January 6th riot. Angry rhetoric is flying with staffers accusing the Committee of becoming a “Cheney 2024 campaign” while both the Cheney spokesperson and Committee spokesperson lashed out at the staff members as “disgruntled” and producing shoddy or biased work. The underlying issue, however, is important and revealing. The Committee’s color coated teams include a “Blue Team” on the failure to prepare adequately for the riot. That part of the investigation is reportedly being dumped or reduced. Members of the “Green” and “Purple” teams are also reportedly irate. Cheney was soundly defeated in her primary in Wyoming and will soon leave Congress.

She is being pushed by some Democrats as a possible surprise candidate for House Speaker if they could get a few Republican votes. That seems highly unlikely. The Republicans are likely to end up with the identical margin held by the Democrats for the past two years. Alternatively, some Democrats want Cheney to run for president either to dog Donald Trump in the primary debates or to run as an independent to siphon off votes in the general election. That seems to be the suspicion for some staffers in the Washington Post story. Fifteen former and current staffers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, expressed concerns that important findings unrelated to Trump will not become available to the American public…

Several committee staff members were floored earlier this month when they were told that a draft report would focus almost entirely on Trump and the work of the committee’s “Gold Team,” excluding reams of other investigative work. Potentially left on the cutting room floor, or relegated to an appendix, were many revelations from the “Blue Team” — the group that dug into the law enforcement and intelligence community’s failure to assess the looming threat and prepare for the well-forecast attack on the Capitol. The proposed report would also cut back on much of the work of the Green Team, which looked at financing for the Jan. 6 attack, and the Purple Team, which examined militia groups and extremism.

“We all came from prestigious jobs, dropping what we were doing because we were told this would be an important fact-finding investigation that would inform the public,” said one former committee staffer. “But when [the committee] became a Cheney 2024 campaign, many of us became discouraged.” If true, the report will largely track the virtual exclusive focus of the hearings with open references to the 2024 election as an overriding concern. Some of us have lamented that the J6 Committee could have been so much more than a one-sided, highly partisan investigation. House Democrats barred two Republican members originally selected by GOP leaders, who then boycotted the panel in response.

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“Wow! It was amazing to spend 7 hours with Dr. Fauci,” Laundry wrote Wednesday on Twitter. “The man who single-handedly wrecked the U.S. economy based upon ‘the science.’

Louisiana AG: Fauci ‘Can’t Recall’ Details Of His COVID-19 Response (JTN)

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry says that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to the U.S. president, could not recall details of his COVID-19 response during a deposition. Landry and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt deposed Fauci as part of their “lawsuit against the federal government for allegedly colluding with social media companies to censor speech.” According to a press release from Landry’s office, “Louisiana and Missouri filed this landmark lawsuit in May of 2022 and have since uncovered troves of discovery showing that the federal government and the Biden Administration have worked with social media companies to censor speech on topics like COVID-19 and other issues.”


Landry commented on Fauci’s deposition on Wednesday. “Wow! It was amazing to spend 7 hours with Dr. Fauci,” Laundry wrote Wednesday on Twitter. “The man who single-handedly wrecked the U.S. economy based upon ‘the science.’ Only to discover that he can’t recall practically anything dealing with his Covid response!” Prior to the deposition taking place, Landry said he hoped to “find out how involved #Fauci was in the censorship of the American people during the COVID pandemic.”

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Resonance

 

 

 

 

 

 

CO2

 

 


The smallest bird in the world is the Zunzunito, or the bee bird.

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime with Paypal, Bitcoin and Patreon.

 

 

 

 

 

Feb 052022
 


René Magritte The black flag 1937

 

Why Are People Deliberately Infecting Themselves With Covid-19? (RT)
Don’t Overload The Immune System With Repeated Vaccinations – EMA (FS)
It’s Really Rather Simple (Denninger)
The Mass Formation Madness Must Stop (Malone)
Fauci Says He’s Mystified by Lagging Vaccine Booster Rates
Attorney Representing Freedom Convoy Shares a Message (CTH)
GoFundMe Shuts Down Freedom Convoy Fundraiser (RT)
Freedom Convoy Finds New Crowdfunding Platform & Crashes It (RT)
Elon Musk Slams GoFundMe Over Protesting Truckers (RT)
GoFundMe Supported Antifa’s ‘CHAZ/CHOP’ Even After People Were Murdered (PM)
New Filing Accuses Feds Of Snooping On Bannon Lawyer (JTN)
What a US Trap for Russia in Ukraine Might Look Like (Lauria)
Death Wish (Jim Kunstler)
Record-Breaking Artist Pak Joins Forces With Assange To Make NFT History (CF)

 

 

Based on wastewater surveillance data. Infections in Massachusetts back down to Pre-Omicron surge levels. Hospitalizations, & deaths should follow in upcoming weeks

 

 

Unmitigated disaster

 

 

After 37 weeks, 20% of myocarditis cases have not healed. Not so mild?!

 

 

So they will be able to work. How sad it that?

Why Are People Deliberately Infecting Themselves With Covid-19? (RT)

If you are, like me, vaccinated against Covid-19 and do not want to catch this nasty virus, you may find it counterintuitive that some people are deliberately infecting themselves with it. But that is what is happening, especially in places with strict rules placing limits on what unvaccinated people can do. Where I live in Italy, there is increasing evidence of Covid self-infection as limitations on unvaccinated people are strengthening. I first noticed news of Corona ‘parties’ for people to get infected last November in northern Italy.Sky reported these parties were attracting a lot of attention in Telegram groups in the Bolzano area and that these had spread from Austria and Germany, where the report claimed the superspreading shindigs were born. Indeed, the report noted the tragic death of a 55-year-old man in Austria after he was infected at a Corona party.

At the time, I thought self-infection involved very few people and mostly hard core ‘anti-vax’ activists in places like Bolzano, which has had a reputation for low Covid-19 vaccination rates for a long time. Yet self-infection with Covid-19 has become more widespread in Italy, as laws restricting participation in work, education, and social life for unvaccinated people are implemented. Since last summer, to work in healthcare in Italy, it has been necessary to possess a green pass, which indicates being vaccinated against Covid-19 or recently having recovered from the virus. “We have received various notifications of dinners with positive people organized by unvaccinated nurses,” stated Samanta Grossi, the president of the Professional Nurses association in my nearby city of Treviso. Unvaccinated nurses and other healthcare employees who test positive for Covid-19 avoid suspension from work and pay.

Similarly, employees in education in Italy have been required to demonstrate they are vaccinated or have recently recovered from Covid-19 since last September. An unvaccinated preschool teacher who has been suspended from work recently decided to infect herself with the virus. Police and school headteachers have reported that teachers have been able to get infected and continue teaching in schools by attending dinners with people who are positive with Covid-19. In some instances, they were told some teachers were prepared to pay 200 to 300 euros to do so.

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Google translation from France Soir.

Don’t Overload The Immune System With Repeated Vaccinations – EMA (FS)

For the past few weeks, several scientists have been increasing warnings against vaccine reminders against Covid-19, warnings confirmed on January 11, during a press briefing held at the EMA (European Medicines Agency). While the vaccine booster started several weeks ago in the vast majority of European countries, the United States and Israel, Marco Cavaleri, head of biological health threats and vaccine strategy at the European Medicines Agency , made known his fears about too frequent booster shots. Boosters every four months could cause a problem with the immune response, insists this vaccination official who is also concerned about the risk of fatigue among the population with the continuous administration of boosters.

Boosters “can be done once or even twice, but we don’t think they need to be repeated constantly,” said Marco Cavaleri, who urges countries to allow more time between booster programs and advises perform at the beginning of the cold season in each hemisphere, following the plan established for influenza vaccination strategies. It also invites reflection on how we can move from the current pandemic framework to a more endemic one. The advice comes as several countries consider the possibility of offering people a second booster shot to further protect them against a resurgence of infections with the Omicron variant. A pioneering country in vaccination, Israel believed for a few weeks that it had overcome the epidemic. Now, with more than 40,000 a day, the government has reserved the fourth injection for people over 60 and those with co-morbidities.

In a lengthy interview with CNBC, Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer , echoed the European Medicines Agency’s recommendation. “I don’t know if there’s a need for a fourth booster. It’s something that needs to be tested. And I know that Israel has already started some of these experiments, and we’re going to be running some of these experiments as well. to make sure that if necessary, we will use it,” he said. Indeed, clinical trials to know the quality of the protection of these booster doses, but also the tolerance, would have been desirable before they are administered in the general population.

Whether they are biologists or doctors, big names in science such as Professors Didier Raoult, Jean-Marc Sabatier or Jacques Fantini and his team have made known their doubts about the effectiveness of a vaccination developed from the wild strain from Wuhan and which would have become completely obsolete since the appearance of the Delta variant and especially the Omicron variant. Guest of the program Touche pas à mon poste, Professor Raoult said last week: “It is in the countries where the most vaccines have been made that there are the most cases”. A fact that he supports with scientific explanations still little known to the general public. “There is a significant number of cases that follow a vaccine injection within 15 days to three weeks. This is due to a scientific phenomenon called facilitating antibodies. That is, there are antibodies that facilitate infection. Their effect is seen in the three weeks following the injection” also added the professor.

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“Is this proof that the jabs killed those people? No, but its damn good evidence.”

It’s Really Rather Simple (Denninger)

There is a clear elevation of all-cause mortality in the 25-44 age bracket coinciding with Covid-19 showing up. There is also an elevation in the other age brackets, by the way. All-cause is just that – while some of this is undoubtedly Covid-19, policy-driven deaths are also in there. Suicides, ODs and similar were and are up materially over the 2019 numbers, and these are also in that figure. Dead is dead, I remind you; why is not material to either the dead person or their loved ones. But what we do know, by simple comparison with other age brackets, is that most of it wasn’t Covid. How do we know this? Because the winter of 2020 came and went, where a huge number of older people died as a result of Covid-19 and during most of it there were no jabs available to anyone. This age group saw a small – measurable, but small – bump during that time.

We thus know that Covid simply doesn’t kill people in this age group all that frequently — and, in fact, the mitigations killed far more people than the disease. But then….. Joe Biden’s administration and private employers started issuing threats: Take the jab or get fired. And…. there were a lot of jabs given to people who would have otherwise not taken them, most of which came after the big summer spike of Delta cases. There was an exact correlation in the rise of deaths with the threats. Remember that Biden (and many others) crowed that threats work.

Well, they sure do work, by the data: Threats are deadly and they did in fact kill. Is this proof that the jabs killed those people? No, but its damn good evidence. What’s worse, however, is that post the spike the death rate did not go back to baseline among this age group — and now, it STILL hasn’t. In other words the intervention was worthless and might actually be enhancing infections since (1) you can only die once, (2) the >85 cohort IS seeing reduced mortality (they got hit hard prior, and once dead they no longer can die again) and the same is true, to a lesser-extent, in the 65+ group. There is no net benefit if for a given number of jabs one person is killed by the jab and one person doesn’t die from Covid. That’s a net zero and the only valid means of computing public health benefit is a decrease in all-cause mortality.

Everyone of working age either got nothing or was harmed and worse, there is no follow-on benefit either as in these groups the mortality rate has not decreased compared to prior to jabs being available which, if they actually did reduce all-cause mortality, would be evident in the data. This is now established; net-net on a broad societal basis they’re worthless at best*.

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“Society, our government, is doing an unprecedented and known amount of damage to the healthy development of our children. This has to stop.”

The Mass Formation Madness Must Stop (Malone)

I have written and spoken out about vaccine mandates for children and why they are wrong. Children are rarely at risk of severe disease from COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 and almost all deaths of children have been those with co-morbidities. The vaccines have a high adverse event profile in children that has not been fully analyzed. This is reason enough to not allow mandates, even State government or regional school board mandates. But I have not written as much about masks, school closures, and the selfishness of teacher’s unions, who are more interested in protecting themselves than children. Children are at very little risk from COVID-19 severe disease. Most kids in the USA now have natural immunity, many have been vaccinated, and Omicron is nothing more than a cold for the vast majority of children and adults.

Even during Delta, children rarely develop severe COVID-19 disease. They have strong, healthy immune systems. This disease is stratified by age and co-morbidities. We all know this by now. Furthermore, neither masks nor vaccines prevent infection, replication or transmission of the Omicron strain of SARS-CoV-2. There is no reason to mask children in schools. There is no reason to mask children in shops, restaurants, parks, after school program, etc. There is no reason for children to have plexiglass shields around them in the class room. There is no reason why we need to deny children exercise programs, sports, after school care and physical education. It is time to end social distancing programs and let kids be kids. Children are social beings.

Having normal social interactions with other people, with other children is critical to growing up in a healthy environment. Social isolation of children is not ok. Sports, after school program, childcare, recreational activities and extracurricular activities need to return to normalcy. One important way children learn is by mimicry. Facial expressions of friends, teachers, mentors, parents not only are important for speech development, they are important for children to learn emotional norms and behaviors. We do not know what damage we are doing by masking. At this point, long term effects are unknown.

Furthermore, the COVID-19 unvaccinated children must be treated no differently than any other child. It is not anyone’s business other than the parent’s whether a child is vaccinated for COVID-19 or not. American’s have a fundamental right to privacy and there is no exclusionary clause for people younger than a certain age. Unvaccinated children or unmasked children should not be segregated, shamed or put in special rooms. They should not be excluded from the playground or sports activities. Society, our government, is doing an unprecedented and known amount of damage to the healthy development of our children. This has to stop.

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Listen to The Science, damn it!

Fauci Says He’s Mystified by Lagging Vaccine Booster Rates

White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci said he is confused as to why booster rates are lagging and said he doesn’t “have an easy explanation” for the phenomenon. When asked by a reporter on Wednesday about why fully vaccinated individuals aren’t getting as many boosters, Fauci noted that “about half” of all eligible Americans have received booster doses so far. Fauci made the remarks alongside COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients at a White House briefing. “Why would people who had enough understanding of the risk to go ahead and get the primary series—why we don’t have more getting the booster,” Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, said in response. “I don’t have an easy explanation for that.”

Fauci said that he believes that federal health data suggests that it is “stunningly obvious” that vaccinated people should get a booster dose. “So, the only thing that we can do is to continue to come out with the data and to make sure the American public appreciates why it is so important for optimal protection to get boosted,” he said. Fauci’s comments come as several recent studies have shown that natural immunity, or the immunity achieved by prior COVID-19 infection, provides effective and lasting protection. One preprint study published in Italy in late January suggested that natural immunity lasts about 18 months.

“At 18 months, 97 percent participants tested positive for anti-NCP, hinting towards the persistence of infection-induced immunity even for the vaccinated individuals,” researchers wrote in a study posted to the Medrxiv website, referring to nucleocapsid, a type of protein within the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

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“Chief Sloly outlined that federal intelligence authorities will be “collecting financial, digital, vehicle registration, driver identification, insurance status and other related evidence that will be used in prosecution.“

Attorney Representing Freedom Convoy Shares a Message (CTH)

Keith Wilson is the lawyer representing the “Truckers for Freedom” organization. Earlier today, prior to the GoFundMe announcement, Mr. Wilson posted a video message for everyone concerning the earlier announcement made by the Ottawa Police chief Peter Sloly. One note: I believe the referenced Canadian Freedom Charter was suspended as part of the national state of emergency declared by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as the justification for the restrictions now being protested.

Earlier Today – Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly held a press conference on Friday announcing measures to combat the continued Freedom Convoy protests in the streets, and to block any additional protesting support from arriving. In essence, the Ottawa police are going to use domestic terrorism authority against the Canadian freedom protest groups. The outlined measures include deploying an additional 150 municipal police officers and undercover federal agents to infiltrate the protest and gather intelligence useful for the purpose of eliminating their effort. Chief Sloly outlined that federal intelligence authorities will be “collecting financial, digital, vehicle registration, driver identification, insurance status and other related evidence that will be used in prosecution.” The jackboots will focus on using acts of mischief, hate, harassment, intimidation and other threatening behaviors, whether real or created by Canadian intelligence operations, to target the protestors.


Additionally, a “surge and contain” strategy will be used to isolate the protest in the red zone area in front of Parliament Hill. Ottawa police will use heavy concrete barriers as barricades, to create no-access roadways throughout the downtown core, and they will likely close highway off-ramps and bridges to stop additional support and/or protest groups from arriving. The goal is to isolate the current protest groups, cut off their supply and support logistics, and pick them off. Further, any police officer who is caught aiding, assisting, supporting, sympathizing with or facilitating the ongoing freedom protest in the city, will be removed from duty and subject to arrest. All Ottawa police officers are to regard the protesting group as an unlawful, extremist and hate-filled mob and have a duty to comply with the instructions of the command and control structure.

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GoFundMe will become a lot smaller. People don’t like their money stolen, or redirected.

GoFundMe Shuts Down Freedom Convoy Fundraiser (RT)

Crowdfunding site GoFundMe has shut down a campaign in support of the anti-vaccine mandate movement in Canada, after it amassed nearly $8 million, claiming that the protest is no longer peaceful. Following a review of “relevant facts” and “multiple discussions with local law enforcement and city officials,” the fundraising was found to be in violation of the platform’s rule that “prohibits the promotion of violence and harassment,” the company said in a statement on Friday. The platform admitted that the organizers “provided a clear distribution plan for the initial $1M that was released earlier this week and confirmed funds would be used only for participants who traveled to Ottawa to participate in a peaceful protest,” but claimed that the situation has since “evolved” and no further funds will be released.


“Given how this situation has evolved, no further funds will be directly distributed to the Freedom Convoy organizers — we will work with organizers to send all remaining funds to credible and established charities verified by GoFundMe.” The fundraiser has garnered $7,964,141 (Can$10,096,400) as of Wednesday night, when it was suspended for “review.” GoFundMe said all donors may now submit a request for a full refund until February 19, 2022. The crowdfunding site said it wants to remain a “trusted platform” and insisted that it “supports peaceful protests.” The Freedom Convoy kicked off last week in protest of a vaccination mandate for truckers traveling between the United States and Canada, seeing scores of vehicles blockade a border crossing near Coutts, Alberta and create a miles-long backup stretching into Montana.

Convoy Milk River

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GiveSendGo is working hard to accomodate the overwhelming amount of donations.

Freedom Convoy Finds New Crowdfunding Platform & Crashes It (RT)

A website hosting a new fundraising effort to support truck drivers protesting vaccine mandates in Canada is experiencing major technical difficulties, with a wave of traffic crashing the platform after GoFundMe canceled a prior campaign that garnered millions of dollars. Shortly after GoFundMe gave the boot to the ‘Freedom Convoy 2022’ campaign on Friday afternoon, organizers made another attempt on Christian crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo, raising more than $150,000 in just a matter of hours. A spike in visitors has caused problems for the website, however.

“We know the site is slow, or getting a server error. We are working on it! All hands on deck. There’s thousands on [the site] making successful donations so please try again if you get an error!” it said. The new fundraiser features a brief video from organizer Tamara Lich, who explained that GoFundMe had shut down the previous campaign that raised around $8 million (Can$10 million) after only disbursing $1 million, freezing the rest. “We decided to team up with an organization called GiveSendGo, which is going to enable us to get donations into the hands of the truckers much, much quicker while everybody gets the rest of this stuff sorted out,” she said, adding “You know we plan to be here for the long-haul, as long as it takes to ensure that your rights and freedoms are restored.”

The money is being raised to support a convoy of truckers who have descended on the Canadian capital to demand an end to cross-border vaccine requirements, staging a massive protest in Ottawa. Others have gathered near the border with the US, creating a blockade of big rigs and other vehicles. While local police have denounced the gatherings as disruptive and unlawful, authorities have been unable to disperse the demonstrators for several days. On the heels of GoFundMe’s decision to scrap the original fund drive, the Ottawa Police Service cheered the move, thanking the site for “listening to our concerns as a City and a police service.” “The decision to withhold funding for these unlawful demonstrations is an important step and we call on all crowdfunding sites to follow,” it said.

The Canada I love
https://twitter.com/i/status/1489334216672305152

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“Protesters in downtown Ottawa “remain highly organized, well-funded, extremely committed to resisting all attempts to end the demonstration safely,” Sloly said.”

That’s the same guy who said last week that the protest was uniquely peaceful.

And they’re quite willing to end the demonstration safely, just not on Trudeau’s terms.

Elon Musk Slams GoFundMe Over Protesting Truckers (RT)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk tweeted a meme on Saturday, calling US-based fundraising platform GoFundMe “professional thieves.”Musk also posted a screenshot of the platform’s 2020 tweet promoting a campaign to raise money for farming inside the ‘CHOP’ zone (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest) in downtown Seattle, Washington, which was occupied by activists during the peak of the anti-racism and police brutality protests in the US that year. GoFundMe’s tweet from two years ago said: “In a community with no police, this farmer is feeding people and bringing them closer together.” “Double standard?” Musk wrote on Saturday, referring to the platform’s recent decision to stop the campaign to raise money for Canadian truckers protesting the country’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate. Musk also denied reports that he had donated to the protesters.

[..] Ottawa Police thanked GoFundMe on Twitter. “The decision to withhold funding for these unlawful demonstrations is an important step and we call on all crowdfunding sites to follow,” they wrote. Police earlier said they were aware of “inappropriate and threatening language on social media” related to the protests. Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly described the protests on Friday as “increasingly volatile and increasingly dangerous.” Protesters in downtown Ottawa “remain highly organized, well-funded, extremely committed to resisting all attempts to end the demonstration safely,” Sloly said.

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What Musk was referring to.

GoFundMe Supported Antifa’s ‘CHAZ/CHOP’ Even After People Were Murdered (PM)

GoFundMe, the crowdfunding platform that recently seized over $10 million in funds intended for the Canadian truckers’ Freedom Convoy, financially supported and promoted the illegal “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone” or CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle, Washington during the height of the summer 2020 riots that broke out in the wake of George Floyd’s death. As detailed by Jack Posobiec on Twitter, GoFundMe tweeted an advertisement publicizing one of the many crowdfunds set up in the CHAZ/CHOP, which was established by Black Lives Matter supporters, local gangs, and elements of Antifa, who set up a cop-free perimeter that encased several neighborhoods in Seattle’s Capitol Hill district. Several people, including three minors, were gunned down at the location.


In a tweet, GoFundMe promoted the CHAZ/CHOP: “In a community with no police, this farmer is feeding people & bringing them closer together.” The organization linked to a Bloomberg Quicktake video about revolutionary gardening – an endeavor that was widely mocked on social media after videos and pictures showed a “garden” being planted by CHAZ/CHOP “residents” who spread cardboard on turf with soil above it. Crucially, GoFundMe has supported violent, illegal movements such as CHAZ/CHOP but has cited “police reports of violence and other unlawful activity” and its policies against “violence and harassment” as its reason for seizing the Freedom Convoy’s crowdfund.

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“If the Government failed to follow the applicable rules – which will be revealed through additional discovery – a ground may exist to dismiss the indictment.”

New Filing Accuses Feds Of Snooping On Bannon Lawyer (JTN)

The legal team for former Trump adviser Steve Bannon leveled explosive charges Friday night, accusing federal prosecutors of snooping on one of his defense lawyers and the FBI of misleading the grand jury through omissions. In a motion filed in U.S. District Court where Bannon is charged with contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena for the Jan. committee, lawyers disclosed evidence the Justice Department and phone carriers turned over to them show prosecutors obtained phone and email records for defense lawyer Robert J. Costello. “The Government used grand jury subpoenas to investigate Mr. Bannon’s attorney, Robert J. Costello, Esquire, at the very time that Mr. Costello was communicating with the prosecution team and advocating on Mr. Bannon’s behalf,” the defense motion stated.

“There are stringent rules that apply to the investigation of attorneys. Such rules exist because these types of investigations may constitute an impermissible interference with the attorney-client relationship, and the effective assistance of counsel as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” it added. “If the Government failed to follow the applicable rules – which will be revealed through additional discovery – a ground may exist to dismiss the indictment. The lawyers submitted evidence turned over by the DOJ that appears to confirm Costello’s email and phone records were obtained, including a letter from the prosecutors themselves, but it does not indicate whether the records were obtained as a result of Bannon’s case or another. Costello also represents former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

“Mr. Costello represented Mr. Bannon before the January 6th Select Committee in relation to the subpoena it issued to Mr. Bannon and is, therefore, a witness to the conduct charged in the Indictment,” prosecutor Amanda Vaughn explained in a Jan. 7 letter. But Vaughn wrote that “the Government has not taken any steps to obtain any attorney-work product relating to any attorney’s representation of Mr. Bannon or to obtain any confidential communications between Mr. Bannon, Mr. Costello, and Mr. Katz, or between Mr. Bannon and any other attorneys.”

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Do you see Putin walking into a trap? Or is he the one setting the trap?

What a US Trap for Russia in Ukraine Might Look Like (Lauria)

United States plans to weaken Russia by imposing punishing sanctions and bringing world condemnation on Moscow depend on Washington’s hysteria about a Russian invasion of Ukraine actually coming true. At his press conference on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin said, “I still believe the United States is not that concerned about Ukraine’s security, though they may think about it on the sidelines. Its main goal is to contain Russia’s development. This is the whole point. In this sense, Ukraine is simply a tool to reach this goal. This can be done in different ways: by drawing us into some armed conflict, or compelling its allies in Europe to impose tough sanctions on us like the US is talking about today.”

At the U.N. Security Council on Monday, Russia’s U.N. envoy Vassily Nebenzia said: “Our Western colleagues say that de-escalation is needed, but they are the first to build up tension, enhance rhetoric and escalate the situation. Talks about an imminent war are provocative per se. It might seem you call for it, want it and wait for it to come, as if you wanted your allegations to come true.” The war mania being drummed up in U.S. and British media recalls even Zbigniew Brzezinski‘s warning that “whipping up anti-Russian hysteria … could eventually become a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Without an invasion the U.S. seems lost. No sanctions, no world opprobrium, no weakening of Russia. If the U.S. is trying to lure Russia into a trap in Ukraine, what might it look like?

Ukraine says it is not planning an offensive against the breakaway provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, which border Russia in the east. But just ten days ago Ukrainian President Zelensky said: “We have learned to contain external threats. It is time we begin offensive actions aimed at securing our national interests. Our citizens are united in wanting their territory returned” Joe Biden has said a Russian invasion will come in February, when the ground freezes. But it could also be the time for a Kiev offensive to recover the two Donbass provinces. NATO nations are pouring weapons into Ukraine supposedly to defend it against the “invasion.” But the weapons transfers could instead be preparation for an offensive, on orders from Washington. Since the 2014 U.S.-backed coup the U.S. essentially runs the country and all Ukrainian leaders, including Zelensky, serve at the pleasure of the U.S. president.

The ground will also be frozen for Kiev’s forces in February, which was the month of the 2014 coup, while Putin was in Sochi for the Winter Olympics. He is now in Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics, away from the command center in Moscow. (The 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing was also the time Georgia instigated its war with Russia against its renegade provinces at the behest of the United States.) When Kiev stepped up attacks against Donbass in March and October 2021, Russia both time increased its troop deployments near the Ukraine border, which this time is being interpreted by Washington as plans for an “imminent” invasion. It is an invasion the U.S. absolutely needs to implement its plans to weaken Russia (and ultimately to replace Putin with a pliable leader in the mold of Boris Yeltsin.) As Moscow has never openly threatened such an invasion, the U.S. appears to be devising ways to get it.

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“..even the news media is tired of its role in the controlled demolition of our country.”

Death Wish (Jim Kunstler)

Looks like the backup plan is for “Joe Biden’s” geniuses in the foreign affairs and intel bureaucracy to start a war with Russia over Ukraine, our dearest ally in the whole wide world (not). Yesterday, State Department spox Ned Price floated up a raggedy balloon about Russia pulling a “false flag” stunt in Ukraine’s Donbass frontier to get things going. It sounded like he was just making shit up. And he was conspicuously short on details. “Our intel people something something, blah blah….” Skeptical reporters shot the balloon down with a few barbed remarks — the darn thing just zinged around the press room with the air rushing out and crashed on the spox’s podium — suggesting that even the news media is tired of its role in the controlled demolition of our country.

More likely, though, the financial scaffold of Late Modernity gives way under the burden of rackets and Ponzis it has been asked to support. This week, Facebook (a.k.a. Meta) scored the world record for biggest single-day market value drop ever, shedding $232-billion in capital losses. You go, Zuck! The Everything Bubble has achieved supernova scale and everybody knows she’s gonna blow as soon as Jay Powell lifts the Fed Funds rate twenty-five basis points. When that finally happens, things get realer than real and Truth comes marching in like the saints with bells on. It’ll be the Left’s Masque of the Red Death… ashes, ashes, all fall down.

The actual global economy itself — the thing that sends, you know, products from one place to another — is seizing up like the engine on a beater 1998 Buick Regal. Long about right now, lots of things are not going from point A to Point B, including stuff of a food nature. It’s starting to irk the home-folks. When all that goes south, you’ll hear no more about Covid-19, systemic racism, the patriarchy, the drag queen story hour, and all the other hobgoblins that infest the Left’s gospel garden of Wokery. The kryptonite is coming on hard. They are done… and for the moment we are stuck with them running the country.

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“..his collection ‘The Merge’ set a new record for an artwork sold publicly by a living artist at US $91.8 million..”

Record-Breaking Artist Pak Joins Forces With Assange To Make NFT History (CF)

Censored’ is a digital art collection created by NFT artist Pak in collaboration with imprisoned WikiLeaks-founder Julian Assange.The art collection titled ‘Censored’ will be unveiled shortly in time for the auction on February 7th. ‘Censored’ is shrouded in mystery and is set to make NFT history.Pak has dropped some hints with tweets about censorship and freedom. On January 5th, Pak’s Twitter account @muratpak tweeted “nine hundred ninety nine”, signifying the number of days that Julian Assange had spent in prison. The following day, @muratpak tweeted “define freedom”, followed by “freedom as a medium” and linked to a WikiLeaks tweet. Renowned digital artist Pak is one of the highest grossing artists alive, known for pushing conceptual and stylistic boundaries. Pak became a household name in the traditional art world after Sotheby’s auctioned his collection ‘The “Fungible’ in April 2021, selling for US $16.8 million. In December 2021, Pak again made headlines as his collection ‘The Merge’ set a new record for an artwork sold publicly by a living artist at US $91.8 million, surpassing Jeff Koons’s “Rabbit”. [..]


‘Censored’ is a two-part NFT collection: The first part is a one of a kind (“1/1 edition”) NFT, which Pak describes as “dynamic and generative”. “Dynamic” means that the digital art piece changes over time. “Generative” means that the artwork is generated from the artist’s instructions on the blockchain. The single edition NFT is expected to attract major collectors and NFT-world cooperative funds known as Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). The second part of the collection is an “open edition,” which in addition to being “dynamic” will also be participative. The open edition is designed to be more accessible and therefore draw a broader pool of collectors. As a reference point, Pak’s record-breaking collection ‘Merge’ set the record for open editions with 30,000 collectors and grossing US $91.8 million.

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Oct 012020
 


Fred Stein Little Italy New York 1943

 

US Economy Plunged Over 31% In Q2 (RT)
This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic (Atl.)
James Comey’s ‘No Clue’ Routine On Russia Probe Exposes FBI In Distress (JTN)
Proud Boys & Antifa Are The Winners From The Presidential Debate (Turley)
Wall Street Responds To The “Shitshow” Debate (ZH)
Two Crucial Things Emerged From The First Presidential Debate (Widburg)
Charles Nenner – We Are in a Very Dangerous Period (USAW)
56 Million Americans Depended on Food Banks During the Pandemic (MPN)
Fed Study on Household Wealth Reveals Troubling Trends in American Inequality (MPN)
NATO Boss Stoltenberg Tells Georgia To ‘Prepare For Membership’ (RT)
New Details Of Sophisticated Spying Operation On Julian Assange Emerge (TH)
Trump Associate Ordered Huge Surveillance Of Assange Inside Embassy (Age)
The Arctic Hasn’t Been This Warm For 3 Million Years (PhysOrg)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Money to Biden
https://twitter.com/seamusbruner/status/1310950906968649729

 

 

Sounds like a lot. But it’s annualized.

US Economy Plunged Over 31% In Q2 (RT)

US GDP fell by a 31.4 percent annualized rate last quarter, marking the steepest drop in output since the government started keeping records in 1947, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday. The previous worst quarterly drop was observed in the first three months of 1958, when GDP fell 10 percent on an annualized basis. The new data reflects a slightly upward revision, with output previously reported to have contracted at a 31.7 percent pace during the period. “The decline in second quarter GDP reflected the response to COVID-19, as ‘stay-at-home’ orders issued in March and April were partially lifted in some areas of the country in May and June, and government pandemic assistance payments were distributed to households and businesses,” said the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

“This led to rapid shifts in activity, as businesses and schools continued remote work and consumers and businesses canceled, restricted, or redirected their spending,” it added. The US economy fell at a five percent rate in the first quarter, signaling an end to a nearly 11-year-long economic expansion, which was the longest in the nation’s history. Economists expect growth to slow significantly in the final three months of this year, to a rate of around four percent. The economy could plunge back into a recession if Congress fails to pass another stimulus measure, or if there is a resurgence of the coronavirus, they say.

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Superspreaders appear real. But we don’t recognize them.

This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic (Atl.)

By now many people have heard about R0—the basic reproductive number of a pathogen, a measure of its contagiousness on average. But unless you’ve been reading scientific journals, you’re less likely to have encountered k, the measure of its dispersion. The definition of k is a mouthful, but it’s simply a way of asking whether a virus spreads in a steady manner or in big bursts, whereby one person infects many, all at once. After nine months of collecting epidemiological data, we know that this is an overdispersed pathogen, meaning that it tends to spread in clusters, but this knowledge has not yet fully entered our way of thinking about the pandemic—or our preventive practices.

The now-famed R0 (pronounced as “r-naught”) is an average measure of a pathogen’s contagiousness, or the mean number of susceptible people expected to become infected after being exposed to a person with the disease. If one ill person infects three others on average, the R0 is three. This parameter has been widely touted as a key factor in understanding how the pandemic operates. News media have produced multiple explainers and visualizations for it. Movies praised for their scientific accuracy on pandemics are lauded for having characters explain the “all-important” R0. Dashboards track its real-time evolution, often referred to as R or Rt, in response to our interventions. (If people are masking and isolating or immunity is rising, a disease can’t spread the same way anymore, hence the difference between R0 and R.)

Unfortunately, averages aren’t always useful for understanding the distribution of a phenomenon, especially if it has widely varying behavior. If Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, walks into a bar with 100 regular people in it, the average wealth in that bar suddenly exceeds $1 billion dollars. If I also walk into that bar, not much will change. Clearly, the average is not that useful a number to understand the distribution of wealth in that bar, or how to change it. Sometimes, the mean is not the message. Meanwhile, if the bar has a person infected with COVID-19, and if it is also poorly ventilated and loud, causing people to speak loudly at close range, almost everyone in the room could potentially be infected—a pattern that’s been observed many times since the pandemic begin, and that is similarly not captured by R. That’s where the dispersion comes in.

There are COVID-19 incidents in which a single person likely infected 80 percent or more of the people in the room in just a few hours. But, at other times, COVID-19 can be surprisingly much less contagious. Overdispersion and super-spreading of this virus is found in research across the globe. A growing number of studies estimate that a majority of infected people may not infect a single other person. A recent paper found that in Hong Kong, which had extensive testing and contact tracing, about 19 percent of cases were responsible for 80 percent of transmission, while 69 percent of cases did not infect another person. This finding is not rare: Multiple studies from the beginning have suggested that as few as 10 to 20 percent of infected people may be responsible for as much as 80 to 90 percent of transmission, and that many people barely transmit it.

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A very strange performance. A few years ago, Comey said he remembered everything from his conversations with Trump. He wrote a book about the very things he now can’t remember, and he’s writing a second one.

“‘I don’t recall’ is the last defense of someone who has been painted into a corner.”

“All he is doing is putting himself in jeopardy or proving he was an incompetent director with no leadership skills..”

James Comey’s ‘No Clue’ Routine On Russia Probe Exposes FBI In Distress (JTN)

Time and again on Wednesday under the intense glare of the political spotlight, Comey claimed he had been kept in the dark or did not remember anything about essential developments in the Russia collusion probe that implied President Trump’s innocence. “That doesn’t ring any bells with me,” Comey answered when Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham asked about a September 2016 referral to the FBI alleging Hillary Clinton and her campaign may have concocted the whole Russia collusion case against Trump to hide her own vulnerabilities. Similarly, Comey testified he either did not remember or was not told there were serious problems with the Christopher Steele dossier, that the dossier contained Russia disinformation, that Steele’s primary sub-source had disputed information in the explosive document or that the primary sub-source had previously been judged to be a possible Russian asset back between 2009 and 2011.

All those essential facts were kept from the FISA court, and Comey signed three FISA warrant applications approving surveillance targeting the Trump campaign and former adviser Carter Page without disclosing the flaws in the case. Senators reacted with incredulity. “Comey said he didnt kno abt problems w Page FISA b4 he approved again+again,” Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), one of the chamber’s longest serving members, tweeted in shorthand. “If true wheres his outrage that agents made him look foolish by w/holding details? I often tell new agency heads either u run agency or agency runs u Who ran FBI during Russiagate+Where is accountability?” Grassley repeatedly slammed Comey’s “no clue” answers as outrageous. Similarly, Graham repeatedly challenged Comey’s account, calling one of his answers “far-fetched.”

“A bunch of crap to be used against an American citizen,” Graham said, referring to now-disproven information in the Page FISA. “You don’t recall this?” “It doesn’t sound familiar,” Comey answered. Lawmakers weren’t the only ones in disbelief. Former senior executives of the FBI told Just the News that Comey’s testimony laid bare an institution in deep distress that either was keeping its director in the dark about one of the most explosive political cases of all time or engaging in a coverup of epic investigative misconduct that deceived the FISA court and the Congress. “‘I don’t recall’ is the last defense of someone who has been painted into a corner. If Comey was truly this ignorant of arguably the most consequential case in FBI history, then he was pathetically inept,” said Kevin Brock, the former assistant director for intelligence under Comey’s predecessor as director, Robert Mueller.

“But it is far more likely that he was provided with detailed briefings of such a high-profile case on a daily basis, as is routine tradition with FBI directors. Comey knows what he is forgetting,” he added. In his testimony, Comey chose to embrace the first theory — incompetence — telling senators the pattern of mistakes and misconduct identified in the Russia probe “reflects entirely on me” in his role as top executive at the FBI. When Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) called the problems identified in Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s investigative report “really embarrassing,” Comey agreed while insisting none was intended to be criminal conduct.

Jeff Danik, a former supervisory FBI agent, said he fears Comey may have put himself in legal jeopardy with Wednesday’s testimony. “I do not understand him going on out there and putting himself in position where there are so many people who can claim you did know,” Danik said in an interview. “All he is doing is putting himself in jeopardy or proving he was an incompetent director with no leadership skills,” he added. “It’s like a general who says there was a battle plan and all these guys got killed, but it isn’t my fault, I’m just the general.”

Sean Davis Comey

Comey doesn’t remember anything

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The media make up accusations against Trump, that most people actually believe are true, and then they want to force him to deny them every single day, which keeps the attention on their made-up stories.

It worked miracles with the “very fine people” hoax, they still use that one. So why stop there?

Maybe Trump should have played it like Biden, and simply deny the Proud Boys exist.

Proud Boys & Antifa Are The Winners From The Presidential Debate (Turley)

Last night’s presidential debate left many of us in a deep depression over the state of our politics. Once again, the duopoly of power in this country has reduced a population of over 300 million to a two subpar choices. President Donald Trump’s conduct and comments have been rightfully denounced while Biden offered little beyond not being President Trump. There were however two clear and surprising winners last night: Proud Boys and Antifa. When pressed by moderator Chris Wallace on why he has not been more clear in calling for Democratic mayors and governors to crackdown on rioting (including the use of the National Guard), Biden simply said that he was not the president. However, not only is that irrelevant, Biden has been forceful in calling for other actions on these protests and other issues like the pandemic despite his private citizen status.

Yet, the most notable aspect of his exchange with Wallace was his reluctance to denounce Antifa. Instead, Biden referenced FBI Director Christopher Wray’s statement that Antifa was more of a movement than an organization. Biden simply dismissed the question with “Antifa is an idea, not an organization.” It was a telling and inaccurate statement. We previously discussed Wray statement. Wray was adamant: “Antifa is a real thing. It’s not a fiction” and, while it is not a conventional organization as opposed to a movement, they have arrested people who admit that they are Antifa.” I testified in the Senate on Antifa and its history of violence on our campuses and streets. As I have written, Antifa is indeed more of a movement than a specific organization, but it has members and associated groups.

Indeed, it has long been the “Keyser Söze” of the anti-free speech movement, a loosely aligned group that employs measures to avoid easy detection or association. Wray stated “And we have quite a number — and I’ve said this quite consistently since my first time appearing before this committee — we have any number of properly predicated investigations into what we would describe as violent anarchist extremists and some of those individuals self-identify with Antifa.” I have repeatedly emphasized that extreme right groups are also responsible for recent violence and Wray made clear that far right violence still dominates in terms of a threat profile. Moreover, I have opposed declaring Antifa a terrorist organization.

We have ample laws to deal with such extremist violence from the far left or far right. We do not need to rely on terrorism laws or most recently suggested sedition laws. Yet, Antifa is more than some “idea.” The Antifa Handbook discusses how it uses an association of groups, including self-identified Antifa groups, to carry out attacks on critics and those with opposing views. My greatest concern is that we need to take Antifa seriously as a virulent anti-free speech organization. There is a fair criticism of some politicians who have refused to denounce the group or even support it. Former Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison, now the Minnesota attorney general, once said Antifa would “strike fear in the heart” of Trump. This was after Antifa had been involved in numerous acts of violence and its website was banned in Germany. His own son, Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison, declared his allegiance to Antifa in the heat of the protests this summer.

Trump white supremacy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1311498659176108033

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Check out those polling numbers and tell me how confident you are that what you think is correct.

Wall Street Responds To The “Shitshow” Debate (ZH)

While Tuesday’s chaotic “shitshow” of a presidential debate between Trump and Biden revealed absolutely anything about either candidate’s core policies for the 2020-2024 period, it succeeded in raising analysts’ concerns about a bitter election and reinforced the view of slim prospects for further stimulus. As noted earlier, S&P futures fell as the debate left investors concerned that the election would indeed be bitterly contested well into the end of 2020 and perhaps into early 2021, however they have since erased all losses. This view was confirmed by Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone Group, who said that “what we’ve seen from the debate is the reinforcement that if Biden wins, Trump is not going to accept that. People positioned for an ugly contest afterwards have been validated….I don’t think we were expecting anything else from Trump. He continues to put that contested (result) risk premium back into the market.”

The confusion over the debate also meant confusion over who won. As Rabobank’s Michael Every writes, a CBS flash poll had Biden winning 48 – 41, and the CNN poll was 60 – 28. Yet a WGN poll, which is less partisan, saw Trump win 60 – 40, and Telemundo (US Spanish TV) viewers showed Trump winning 66 – 34 , all underlining that people see these things in very different ways. Rabo also quoted veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz who tweeted that his sample group saw some undecided voters now convinced not to vote at all, with the most common refrain being “I’m so sad for our country.” Every also addressed the last question of the evening on the legitimacy of the upcoming election process, where Trump said “This will not end well,” talking of no winner for months, which “concluded the evening under the darkest cloud, suggesting political risk will linger on in the market’s mind.”

Cowen, Chris Krueger: Krueger wrote that he disagrees with the “notion that debate was a dumpster fire: by definition, dumpster fires are contained.” Biden cleared the low hurdle Trump set with “Sleepy Joe,” he said; “was it Romney vs. Obama in the first 2012 debate? No. But he didn’t fall off the stage like Bob Dole in the 1996 race either. So that — in 2020 — is a win.” He doesn’t see the election’s trajectory changing, as each side’s bases were appeased, and called another stimulus deal “very unlikely.”

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“My guess is that this October, the Trump administration is going to release one piece of evidence after another showing that the Democrat party, from Hillary to Obama, and from the FBI to the CIA to the DOJ, and everywhere in between, engaged in a massive, seditious conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2016 election”

Two Crucial Things Emerged From The First Presidential Debate (Widburg)

The short version of the debate is that Biden did well if one ignored that almost every other statement he made was a lie or fantasy; Trump dominated him, almost too aggressively; and Chris Wallace may have been the worst and most obviously biased moderator since Candy Crowley. Most significantly, though, Biden and Trump each made a critical point. Biden’s was a tacit admission that, if he is elected president, he will preside over the end of the filibuster, allowing Democrats to pack the courts and add two new Democrat-majority states. Trump’s point was that he’s holding damning evidence about the Democrats’ coup attempt.

[..][ You can see that Biden made a nonsense statement to avoid answering whether he will preserve the filibuster and the Supreme Court’s current system of nine justices. Shamefully, Wallace let him get away with not answering. Wallace surely understands that Biden’s handlers plan to end the filibuster so that they can pack the court and add D.C. and Puerto Rico as states. Packing the court ends the American experiment as we know it. It means that the Supreme Court will be a political body that will exist solely to put its imprimatur on Democrat policies. And for those who say, “Well, if they pack the Court, then Republicans will pack it more when they’re in power,” that’s sadly foolish.

If Democrats pack the Court, there are no more Republicans. The whole democratic republic will be over. Once Democrats pack the Court, they never again need to persuade American voters to support their policies. One of their first policies in that new era will be to add hard-left Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico as the 51st and 52nd American states. That means four more Democrat Senate votes and a permanent Democrat party majority. You see, the hard-left Democrat party views our American political system the same way Turkey president Recep Tayyip Erdogan viewed democracy before becoming a dictator for life: “Democracy is like a train. We shall get out when we arrive at the station we want.” This time around, once the Democrats win, they will change the rules so they can never lose again.

Heed this warning: If Biden wins, our constitutional America is gone. We will be a socialist country. If you don’t believe me, just read the Democrat platform. They’re not hiding their goals. Trump, though, might have some aces up his sleeve. When the subject of a “transition” came up (based on Biden’s assumption that he will win), Trump stated that he’d been denied a transition period. Instead, there was a coup attempt: ” There was no transition because they came after me trying to do a coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I won and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with our First Lady. They were a disaster. They were a disgrace to our country. And we’ve caught ‘em. We’ve caught ‘em all. We’ve got it all on tape. We’ve caught ‘em all”.

Maybe Trump’s exaggerating, but I don’t think so. And maybe he’s going to keep that evidence secret, but I don’t think that either. My guess is that this October, the Trump administration is going to release one piece of evidence after another showing that the Democrat party, from Hillary to Obama, and from the FBI to the CIA to the DOJ, and everywhere in between, engaged in a massive, seditious conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2016 election. Indeed, the information cascade has already begun with the release of DNI John Ratcliffe’s letter about Hillary’s conceiving of the Russia hoax.

Sean Davis Declassification

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” People go into gold and store it away for the worst case scenario. If banks don’t survive, they have the gold.”

Charles Nenner – We Are in a Very Dangerous Period (USAW)

Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner called this market just 2% from the top in January. What does he think now? He likes gold and says he “made more money in gold than in stocks” in the past few months. Nenner says, “We are playing the long term gold market. We went out at $2,100 (per ounce), and the price target was $1,850 (on the downside). We hit $1,850 a couple of days ago, so we bought back in. We get in and out for a couple of hundred points, and it’s worthwhile. So, the gold cycle is up for much longer. $2,500 is the first target, and it could be we get higher targets. I do not believe in the stock market, most of the markets we do nicely in are the gold market, silver market, crude oil market, bond market and the dollar. It’s all very simple and normal, and the stock market is not going to end very well.”

Nenner is long the stock market now until close to the end of November. Nenner says the rising market may be signaling a coming Trump win in November. Nenner is not sure, but what he is very sure about is the stock market is way overvalued just like it was earlier this year. Nenner explains, “As you know, the stock market is still very much overvalued. One of the reasons is the ‘Buffett Indicator,’ and that is the value of the stock market compared to the value of the entire GDP, and it’s extreme. I think it’s more extreme than the 2000 bubble. If you want to buy low and sell high, you have to have indicators of what is low and what is high, and, for me, this is high. This is based on the fundamentals, but on the cycles, we can try to test the highs one more time. This is not going to end well because everybody will try to get into the market, and then the whole thing is over.”

Nenner thinks with all the unemployment and businesses going under permanently, it is not an inflationary environment, at least not yet. Nenner says, “I still think we are going into a deflationary environment, and that still makes sense. That is also why gold is up. Most people don’t understand that because they always look for inflation for gold to go up. I show them that most of the bull markets in gold are deflationary periods and not inflationary periods. When you have deflation, there is nowhere to hide, and it’s very cheap to hold gold. You are afraid for the financial system, and that’s why gold goes up. . . . Look what happened in real estate. You thought you were safe in real estate. Companies are not buying malls, and companies are not paying rent anymore, or they negotiate and they are not going to pay anymore. So, that’s also not a safe place. So, there is not much left. People go into gold and store it away for the worst case scenario. If banks don’t survive, they have the gold.”

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Not everybody has the gold, though.

56 Million Americans Depended on Food Banks During the Pandemic (MPN)

Amid a pandemic that has claimed the lives of over 209,000 Americans and caused widespread economic dislocation, tens of millions have been forced to rely on food banks to survive. A new report from the Pew Research Center found that 17 percent of the 13,200 people they surveyed said they had received food from a food bank or similar organization during the pandemic. Nationwide, that figure would amount to 56 million Americans. Unsurprisingly, those who identified themselves as “lower income” (35 percent) were far more likely to turn to food banks for help than those in the “upper income” bracket (1 percent). However, even 12 percent of “middle income” Americans admitted they needed outside help to put food on the table.

Black and Hispanic Americans were around three times more likely to need these services than white Americans. Pew’s research also sheds light on a number of other ways in which COVID-19 has harmed American society. 15 percent of respondents said that they had been made unemployed as a result of the fallout, with 25 percent of households having a member lose their job. One third of Americans have been forced to take a pay cut, 16 percent said they had had problems paying rent or mortgages, while a quarter could not pay other bills. As with food bank usage, these other problems were far more common among poorer households and people of color.

[..] Once only associated with enemy nations or with the Great Depression, bread lines have returned to the United States, although they often do not resemble classic images of lines of disheveled people. Today’s bread lines are as likely to be miles-long traffic jams or car parks filled with hungry drivers, sometimes waiting overnight for their turn at the drive through distribution centers. Overwhelmed charities work day and night, but have had to ration out deliveries. Even as food banks were cleaned out, fresh produce rotted on America’s farms. Many American farmers do not sell to a mass market. Instead, their produce is bought up by networks supplying universities, stadiums, or restaurants. But with many of those businesses shuttered, supply distribution networks broke down, leading to feast and famine.

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The Fed studies the inequality it has created.

Fed Study on Household Wealth Reveals Troubling Trends in American Inequality (MPN)

Millionaires and billionaires hold a remarkable 79.2 percent of the United States’ household wealth. That is according to a newly released triennial study into consumer and household finances from the Federal Reserve. The report paints a picture of an unequal America, where a small minority of the rich control the vast majority of household wealth. 11.9 percent of American households have at least $1 million in wealth. Overall, mean family wealth declined by three percent across the country between 2016 and 2019. However, the study notes, wealthy and highly educated families saw their fortunes rise, but households where the main breadwinner had not achieved a high school diploma saw their wealth fall.

In some parts of the country, one million dollars might not seem like an unusual price for a home. However, nationwide, the median home value dropped to $247,000 in 2020, with much more expensive properties rarer. Those merely having a mortgage on a million-dollar home do not qualify as owning $1 million in household wealth. At the same time, much of the country is living in serious poverty. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, around 40 percent of Americans reported that they would be unable to cover a small $400 emergency such as a leaking roof or a car repair. In 2018, 14.3 million U.S. households were food insecure, meaning they had problems finding enough to eat. The coronavirus and the economic dislocation that it has caused has greatly exacerbated both poverty and inequality, meaning that the Federal Reserve’s study, based on data collected before the pandemic, is likely out of date and an underestimate of the problem’s severity.

In 2017, just three men — Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Jeff Bezos — held more wealth than the bottom half of America (164 million people). Since the pandemic began, all three have greatly increased their fortunes. Bezos, for example, has added over $73 billion to his since March alone. This is in stark contrast to tens of millions of people who lost their jobs, leading to a massive wave of de facto rent strikes across the country and a boom in demand for food banks.

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Stoltenberg is evil, which makes him perfect for NATO.

NATO Boss Stoltenberg Tells Georgia To ‘Prepare For Membership’ (RT)

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has urged Georgia to prepare to become a member of the US-led military bloc. On Tuesday, the premier of the former Soviet state Giorgi Gakharia was in Brussels to discuss closer cooperation. Georgia’s effort to join NATO began in 2005, just six years after it left the Russian-dominated CSTO. The integration of the Caucasus nation is seen by NATO leaders as having substantial strategic benefits, including extra Black Sea ports close to Russia. Earlier this year, an agreement between Tblisi and the bloc included joint exercises in the Black Sea and the sharing of more traffic radar data. “I urge [Georgia] to continue making full use of all the opportunities for coming closer to NATO and to prepare for membership,” Stoltenberg said, in a press conference.


“This is important for Georgia, and for NATO.”The secretary-general also noted that the bloc “supports Georgia’s territorial integrity,” calling on northern neighbor Russia to “end its recognition of the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.” Abkhazia and South Ossetia are two de-facto states, recognized by most of the world as part of Georgia. According to Tbilisi, the two regions are actually occupied by Moscow.Speaking to RT, veteran Russian senator Aleksey Pushkov said that the potential induction of Georgia as a member means that NATO sees Russia as its main opponent. Pushkov, a member of the pro-Putin United Russia party, is the former chairman of the Duma’s Foreign Affairs Committee and is widely considered to be close to the Kremlin.

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“U.S. intelligence agencies were reportedly pleased with the level communication that was illicitly intercepted, but encouraged UC Global staff to acquire more – pointing to Assange’s team of lawyers as a “top priority.”

New Details Of Sophisticated Spying Operation On Julian Assange Emerge (TH)

The whistleblowers, henceforth referred to as Witness 1 and Witness 2, detailed the intricate workings of the sophisticated sting referred to by UC Global staff as “Operation Hotel” – they came forward with their testimonies after growing increasingly uneasy about its worsening criminality. Witness 2, an IT expert with the security firm, detailed how Morales had tasked him with replacing the CCTV cameras in the Knightsbridge-located embassy in May of 2017, instructing him to source cameras that allowed for clandestine audio-recording capabilities. His statement, which was produced at the Old Bailey in the fourth and final week of Assange’s U.S. extradition proceedings, reads: “In early December 2017, I was instructed by David Morales to travel with a colleague to install the new security cameras. I carried out the new installation over the course of several days.

“I was instructed by Morales not to share information about the specifications of the recording system, and if asked to deny that the cameras were recording audio. I was told that it was imperative that these instructions be carried out as they came, supposedly, from the highest spheres. “In fact, I was asked on several occasions by Mr. Assange and the Political Counsellor Maria Eugenia whether the new cameras recorded sound, to which I replied that they did not, as my boss had instructed me to do. Thus, from that moment on the cameras began to record sound regularly, so every meeting that the asylee held was captured. At our offices in UC Global it was mentioned that the cameras had been paid for twice, by Ecuador and the United States, although I have no documentary evidence to corroborate this assertion.”

Witness 2 also detailed how Morales had asked for him to arrange for the cameras to contemporaneously transmit the recordings so that UC Global’s “American friends” could have instant access. The whistleblower invented a number of excuses however, stating: “I did this because I did not want to collaborate in an illegal act of this magnitude.” Instead, the UC Global employee was instructed to travel to London every 15 days in order to collect the hard-drives, passing them to Morales who travelled to the U.S. just as frequently – often with his wife – in order to pass the recordings to contacts within the CIA. Morales was rumoured among staff to have been paid €200,000 EUR a month for carrying out the eavesdropping – colleagues noted how his spending had become lavish and noticeable, buying himself a new house and a number of flashy sports cars during the span of two years.

[..] U.S. intelligence agencies were reportedly pleased with the level communication that was illicitly intercepted, but encouraged UC Global staff to acquire more – pointing to Assange’s team of lawyers as a “top priority”. That was in addition to the airport-like screening equipment that was put in place, where every visitor into the Ecuadorean embassy had a photo of their passport taken, their belongings taken off them and sophisticated devices swiped data contained on their digital devices – all forwarded to a secure server somewhere in the United States.

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Sheldon Adelson is above the law.

Trump Associate Ordered Huge Surveillance Of Assange Inside Embassy (Age)

Witness One told the court that Morales exhibited a “real obsession” in monitoring Assange’s lawyers because “our American friends were requesting it”. Witness One terminated the relationship with Morales and sold all shares after realising the full scale of the operation. Witness Two, an IT expert who joined UC Global in 2015, said in a statement that once Trump had won the presidency, Morales won a contract to provide personal security to Adelson and personally provided services for the tycoon and his children when they visited Europe.Witness Two said in mid-2017, Morales asked him to establish a taskforce that would solely look after the technical aspects of the video surveillance network of the Ecuadorian embassy.

By the end of that year, Witness Two said he had installed new cameras in the embassy capable of recording sound and lied to Assange when he was asked if the new cameras picked up audio. The witness testified that orders were given to steal the nappy used on Assange’s son Gabriel because the Americans wanted to establish the baby’s paternity, correctly suspecting that it was Assange’s secret love-child. Witness Two refused and instead tipped off Stella Moris, Assange’s fiancee, to stop bringing the child to the embassy. Witness Two said in December 2017 Morales said that “the Americans were desperate” and had even suggested “that more extreme measures should be employed against the ‘guest’ to put an end to the situation of Assange’s permanence in the embassy”.

“Specifically, the suggestion that the door of the embassy could be left open, which would allow the argument that this had been an accidental mistake, which would allow persons to enter from outside the embassy and kidnap the asylee. “Even the possibility of poisoning Mr Assange was discussed, all of these suggestions Morales said were under consideration during his dealing with his contacts in the United States,” Witness Two said in the affidavit.

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The world also appears to warm up more at night.

The Arctic Hasn’t Been This Warm For 3 Million Years (PhysOrg)

Every year, sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean shrinks to a low point in mid-September. This year it measures just 1.44 million square miles (3.74 million square kilometers) – the second-lowest value in the 42 years since satellites began taking measurements. The ice today covers only 50% of the area it covered 40 years ago in late summer. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are higher than at any time in human history. The last time that atmospheric CO2 concentrations reached today’s level – about 412 parts per million – was 3 million years ago, during the Pliocene Epoch.


As geoscientists who study the evolution of Earth’s climate and how it creates conditions for life, we see evolving conditions in the Arctic as an indicator of how climate change could transform the planet. If global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, they could return the Earth to Pliocene conditions, with higher sea levels, shifted weather patterns and altered conditions in both the natural world and human societies. We are part of a team of scientists who analyzed sediment cores from Lake El’gygytgyn in northeast Russia in 2013 to understand the Arctic’s climate under higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Fossil pollen preserved in these cores shows that the Pliocene Arctic was very different from its current state.

Today the Arctic is a treeless plain with only sparse tundra vegetation, such as grasses, sedges and a few flowering plants. In contrast, the Russian sediment cores contained pollen from trees such as larch, spruce, fir and hemlock. This shows that boreal forests, which today end hundreds of miles farther south and west in Russia and at the Arctic Circle in Alaska, once reached all the way to the Arctic Ocean across much of Arctic Russia and North America.


Because the Arctic was much warmer in the Pliocene, the Greenland Ice Sheet did not exist. Small glaciers along Greenland’s mountainous eastern coast were among the few places with year-round ice in the Arctic. The Pliocene Earth had ice only at one end—in Antarctica—and that ice was less extensive and more susceptible to melting. Because the oceans were warmer and there were no large ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere, sea levels were 30 to 50 feet (9 to 15 meters) higher around the globe than they are today. Coastlines were far inland from their current locations. The areas that are now California’s Central Valley, the Florida Peninsula and the Gulf Coast all were underwater. So was the land where major coastal cities like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Houston and Seattle stand.

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Sep 262020
 


Botticelli Renaissance man (aka Medallion, Young man holding a medallion) 1480-85

 

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Queen To Receive Government ‘Bailout’ To Top Up Income (Ind.)
The Difference Between ‘Villain’ Assange & ‘Intrepid’ Woodward (Camp)
Trump Will Only Leave Office If A Challenger Beats Him In Ritual Combat (BBee)

 

 

We’re going to hit 1 million global deaths tomorrow. No matter how twisted the numbers may be, that’s still a milestone.

 

 

 

 

Matt Taibbi has it exactly right: attacking Barrett for her faith is a very slippery slope. No matter how you feel about Roe vs. Wade. Which would appear to be just about impossible to denounce anyway.

 

 

“Senator Diane Feinstein generated considerable controversy when she said to Barrett: “The dogma lives loudly in you.”

One big problem with attacking her religious beliefs is that Joe Biden labels himself a devout Catholic, too.

Trump To Nominate Amy Coney Barrett To Supreme Court (ZH)

Trump’s likely nominees to replace RBG on The US Supreme Court – 7th Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett, 11th Circuit Judge Barbara Lagoa, and 4th Circuit Judge Allison Jones Rushing – have, according to sources who have leaked their information to The New York Times, been narrowed down to Judge Amy Coney Barrett: President Trump has selected Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the favorite candidate of conservatives, to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and will try to force Senate confirmation before Election Day in a move that would significantly alter the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court for years. Mr. Trump plans to announce on Saturday that she is his choice, according to people close to the process who asked not to be identified disclosing the decision in advance.

The president met with Judge Barrett at the White House this week and came away impressed with a jurist that leading conservatives told him would be a female Antonin Scalia, referring to the justice who died in 2016 and for whom Judge Barrett clerked. Barrett is the most feared by liberals, some of whom concede that she has “a topnotch legal mind.” Many have focused on Judge Barrett’s devout catholicism – and therefore the abortion debate… “She is the perfect combination of brilliant jurist and a woman who brings the argument to the court that is potentially the contrary to the views of the sitting women justices,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion political group, who has praised Mr. Trump’s entire shortlist.

Additionally, as NYT noted earlier in the week, liberal groups have been sounding the alarm over Judge Barrett for two years because of concerns over how she might rule on abortion and the Affordable Care Act. “Amy Coney Barrett meets Donald Trump’s two main litmus tests: She has made clear she would invalidate the A.C.A. and take health care away from millions of people and undermine a woman’s reproductive freedom,” said Nan Aron, the president of Alliance for Justice, a liberal group. In a 2017 law review article written before she joined the appeals court, Judge Barrett was critical of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s 2012 opinion sustaining a central provision of the Affordable Care Act, saying he had betrayed the commands of textualism. “Chief Justice Roberts pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning to save the statute,” she wrote.

The court will again hear arguments on the fate of the law in November, and Judge Barrett’s article suggested that she would give its challengers a sympathetic hearing. However, in one of her most revealing opinions, Barrett took an expansive view of the Second Amendment – dissenting to the right of two colleagues who were appointed by President Ronald Reagan. In the world of conservative judges, she has particularly strong credentials. Judge Barrett began clerking for Justice Antonin Scalia 22 years ago, and her fellow clerks are quick to say she was his favorite. She graduated summa cum laude from Notre Dame Law School and joined the faculty in 2002, earning praise from colleagues as an astute scholar and jurist even if they did not always agree on her jurisprudential premises.

But, as a reminder, Alan Dershowitz notes that when Judge Barrett came before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary for her nomination to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Senator Diane Feinstein generated considerable controversy when she said to Barrett: “The dogma lives loudly in you.” This was a reference to Barrett’s deep Catholic faith. Under our Constitution, Senator Feinstein’s statement crossed the line. Ours was the first Constitution in history to provide that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Although Feinstein did not explicitly impose a religious test, she suggested that personal religious views — which she called dogma — might disqualify a nominee from being confirmed.

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Attacking someone for their religion doesn’t sound overly American to begin with.

‘Rank Religious Bigotry’: Black Church Leaders Defend Amy Coney Barrett (DC)

Black religious leaders rallied Friday to defend reported Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett against criticisms of her Catholic faith. “We do not know whether she will be nominated for a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, for which she is by all reports under consideration,” said the letter, which was signed by Charismatic Christian and Black Pentecostal leaders including clergy, scholars and pastors. “But we do know that attacks on her Christian beliefs and her membership in a charismatic Christian community reflect rank religious bigotry that has no legitimate place in our political debates or public life,” the letter said. President Donald Trump reportedly has selected Barrett as the Supreme Court nominee, multiple outlets reported Friday.


The letter continued: “We condemn these vile attacks—which began three years ago during the process of her confirmation for the judicial post she currently holds. As the descendants of slaves we are particularly sensitive to acts of discrimination and we demand an end to this reprehensible conduct.” The letter, titled “A Black Defense of Freedom of Conscience and Amy Coney Barrett,” was published by the Seymour Institute for Black Church and Policy Studies, an institution dedicated to educating and training black church leaders. The defense comes after Democrats suggested at Barrett’s 2017 confirmation hearings that her Catholicism made her unfit to serve as a judge. Barrett’s Catholic faith has also been called “extreme,” and media has attempted to link a Catholic group associated with Barrett to the fictional dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

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“.. they abandoned you and sold you out..”

Trump $500B Black America Plan Names KKK, Antifa Terrorist Organizations (Fox)

President Trump’s plan for Black America designates the KKK and Antifa as terrorist organizations and calls for making lynching a national hate crime, while pledging to increase access to capital in Black communities by nearly $500 billion, Fox News has learned. The president on Friday is expected to roll out details of what the campaign is calling the “Platinum Plan,” which details “opportunity,” “security,” “prosperity,” and “fairness” for the Black Community. “For decades, Democrat politicians like Joe Biden have taken Black voters for granted. They made you big promises before every election—and then the moment they got to Washington, they abandoned you and sold you out,” the president is expected to say Friday, according to remarks exclusively obtained by Fox News.

“The Democrats will always take Black voters for granted until large numbers of Black Americans vote Republican.” The president is expected to tout the plan as “a bold vision that we can and will achieve over the next four years.” The president’s plan, according to the campaign, will increase access to capital in Black communities by almost $500 billion, help to create 500,000 new Black-owned businesses, and help to create 3 million new jobs for the Black community. Fox News obtained a copy of the “Platinum Plan.” It states that it will “prosecute the KKK and ANTIFA as terrorist organizations and make lynching a national hate crime.” The president’s plan also vows to make Juneteenth a national holiday.

Meanwhile, the president is also expected to commit to working on a “Second Step Act,” and provide access to better jobs and training opportunities for those in Black communities. The Platinum Plan also pledges to give Black churches the ability to compete for federal resources for their communities; bring better and tailored healthcare to address what the campaign called “historic disparities,” and advance home ownership opportunities and enhance financial literacy in Black communities.

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Better show up, Joe.

Likely Voters: In-Person Presidential Debates Important This Year (JTN)

A strong majority of likely U.S. voters say in-person, face-to-face presidential debates between President Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden are important in terms of their expected vote, according to a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen. Among the likely voters surveyed, 75% said the debates were important. Just 24% said they were not, while 1% were unsure. Notably, Republicans were significantly more likely than Democrats (69% – 42%) to say the debates were “very important.” Independents were closer to Democrats on the question, with 46% attaching major importance to the debates. Rasmussen pointed out that, historically speaking, debates “are built up as a significant event, like a prize fight.”


“Political junkies and pundits thoroughly enjoy them,” he said, but overall the debates “rarely move the needle in terms of voting intentions.” “It is possible that this year could be different because voters have seen so little of Joe Biden,” he also said. Holding the 2020 presidential debates on a live stage was somewhat in doubt earlier in the year, with speculation that the coronavirus pandemic might lead to the event being held virtually. Over the summer, there were also indications that Democrats might be shying away from letting Biden participate, with Nancy Pelosi in August suggesting that no debates should be held at all.

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38 days left?!

FBI Agent: Never Russia Collusion But Mueller Team Had ‘Get Trump’ Goal (JTN)

An FBI agent who played a lead role investigating Michael Flynn told the Justice Department there was never evidence of wrongdoing by the retired general or Russian collusion by President Trump, but the probe was kept open by Special Counsel Robert Mueller because his team had a “get Trump” goal, according to an explosive interview released Friday. Agent William Barnett’s interview with Justice Department prosecutors earlier this month provided a bombshell claim that both FBI superiors under agency Director James Comey and Mueller’s team exhibited bias in their pursuit of Trump that upended the normal investigative decisions, tactics and commitment to pursue evidence neutrally.

The interview emerged just one day after the Justice Department released text messages showing FBI analysts bought liability insurance in January 2017 because they feared they could be sued for misconduct committed during the Russia probe. “BARNETT thought that the TRUMP campaign may have been aware the Russians were attempting to impact the election but that was far different from the TRUMP campaign and the Russians having a deal and/or working together quid pro quo,” the report of his Sept. 17 interview reads. “BARNETT” and others joked about how the investigation into collusion could be made into a game, which they referred to as “Collusion Clue.”

In the hypothetical game, investigators were able to choose any character conducting any activity in any location and pair this individual with another character and interpret it as evidence of collusion. Barnett added: “With respect to Flynn’s [phone call] with the Russian ambassador in December 2016 BARNETT did not believe Flynn was being directed by TRUMP. BARNETT did not believe FLYNN had any additional information to provide SCO. Barnett believed the prosecution of Flynn by SCO was used as a means to ‘get TRUMP.’ ”

Barnett described how the top levels of the FBI, including now-fired Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, suddenly took over the investigation after Trump won the November 2016 election and continued to keep the case going even though there was “little detail concerning specific evidence of criminal events.” “BARNETT still did not see any evidence of collusion between the TRUMP campaign and the Russian government,” the interview report stated. “Barnett was willing to follow any instructions being given by the deputy director as long as it was not a violation of the law.”

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Excerpt of the book “Permanent Coup”. Not new, but good to point out that the story came from the NYT.

How Joe Biden Pushed To Quash Investigation Of Burisma (Smith)

“Well, son of a bitch,” said Joe Biden. “He got fired.” The audience laughed. Biden always knew how to make people laugh. He had the common touch. But these weren’t common people — it was an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations in Manhattan, and Biden was trying to impress them with a story about himself as a man who got things done. It is easier to get things done using the resources of the U.S. government. Biden was talking about a trip he made to Kiev to speak with Ukrainian officials. “I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee,” Biden said. He said that he had a commitment from the Ukrainian president and prime minister to fire the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating the Ukrainian company that paid his son more than $80,000 a month. Unlike his father, who made many business trips to Kiev, Hunter never visited.

The Ukrainian heads of state and government tried to deflect Biden’s demands. “We’re not going to give you the billion dollars,” Biden told the Ukrainians. “They said, ‘You have no authority. You’re not the president.'” Biden dared them to call Obama. “I said, call him.” The Manhattan audience laughed again. “I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired.” Biden had implicated the former president in an extortion scheme, in front of an audience. His statements were on videotape for anyone to view online. Of course no one was going to prosecute Obama or Biden. The making of foreign policy requires the use of various instruments to advance the national interest. Whether leveraging U.S. taxpayer money to get the vice president’s son out of trouble served the national interest is another question.

Biden said he never asked Hunter about his business, but he should have warned him that doing business in Kiev was a bad idea, for him and for U.S. national security. Hunter’s problems with money, women, and substance abuse would have flagged the attention of foreign intelligence services looking to influence the United States through the troubled son of the vice president. His job on the board of a company under investigation for corruption in a country known for corruption also would have made him and U.S. national security vulnerable. It was the duty of the chief executive to find out what, if anything, had happened. Donald Trump was impeached, in part, to punish him for asking what Joe and Hunter Biden had been up to in Ukraine. Democrats and the media knew the Bidens were involved in questionable practices.

In December 2015, the New York Times had reported that Hunter’s work for a corrupt Ukrainian energy company called Burisma compromised the vice president. But four years later, the context in which those facts had appeared changed. Hillary Clinton and Biden were no longer vying with each other for the 2016 nomination. Clinton was no longer the establishment pick, and her campaign had no reason to dump dirt on Biden to hurt his candidacy. In 2019, the story was nakedly about Democratic party corruption. So according to the left, facts describing Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine became components of a right-wing conspiracy theory, even though those facts appeared in the Times.

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“The Democrats are not just having a tantrum, now they’re chewing up the furniture, ululating, beating their flanks, discharging gobs of snot, peeing their panties, and foaming at the mouth..”

Female Problems (Kunstler)

History-the-trickster has paradoxically anointed the Great Disrupter, Mr. Trump, as the agent of order while the Democrats seek to bring chaos into every quarter of American life, a party of shrieking “Karens” and men acting like women. Such as: Tom Friedman of The New York Times mewling like a little girl to Anderson Cooper on CNN Thursday night that he was “living in terror,” that “everybody should be terrified,” because Mr. Trump “refuses to commit to accepting the election results.” Is that so? I think it was Hillary Clinton who declared just a few weeks ago that “Joe Biden should not concede the election under any circumstances” — for instance, the circumstance that he loses the election.

Of course, Mr. Trump, troll supremo, is simply punking his adversaries by proposing to play fair, that is, to play by the same rules they play by. And this only causes the Democrats to retreat into the chaos that is their comfort zone, where they hop up and down like fourteen-year-old girls in a tantrum. They are provoked, you understand, because Mr. Trump actually represents the thing they hate most: Daddy! Daddy’s in da house, the White House, as a matter of fact, and this baleful symbolic circumstance has driven the Democrats out of their gourds for four years, turning them into a party of hysterical women and men acting like hysterical women. Would you want to get on an airplane in bad weather piloted by a crew of hysterical women? That’s kind of the Big Question going into this national election 2020.

Tantrums, tantrums everywhere! The hysterical women (including men) of the Democratic Party have enlisted Black Lives Matter as their official agents of chaos. It must be so, because every time chaos erupts in an American city, and buildings catch on fire, and businesses are looted and burnt down, and police are bushwhacked, the local Democrats in charge where these things happen do not offer a peep of objection. And neither Kamala Harris nor her sidekick Joe Biden send any message aimed at quelling the violent hysteria. One must conclude that they’re on-board with rioting, arson, looting, and bushwhacking. Like I said: chaos = their comfort zone.

[..] The death of Justice RBG has amplified the hysteria. The Democrats are not just having a tantrum, now they’re chewing up the furniture, ululating, beating their flanks, discharging gobs of snot, peeing their panties, and foaming at the mouth. If he was anyone else but Daddy, Mr. Trump might have to take them out and have them shot. Instead, the President is going to nominate a sane and reasonable Mommy to the Supreme Court, and Uncle Cocaine Mitch is going to see that she is confirmed, and there is an excellent chance that together they will bring order back to this deranged household — and then perhaps we can turn our attention to the real existential problems of financial crisis and economic collapse.

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Why not make Finland our ideal instead?

Scientists Urge UK Not To Follow Sweden’s Approach To Pandemic (Ind.)

Sweden’s handling of coronavirus has been “ineffective” and its controversial approach to the pandemic should not be given credence in the UK, a group of scientists have warned. Independent Sage – a collection of experts mirroring the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies – said the success of the country’s light-touch approach had been overstated in some quarters. In a briefing on Friday, Dr Gabriel Scally, a member of the group and president of epidemiology at the Royal Society of Medicine, said that compared to its neighbouring countries, Sweden had been unsuccessful in preventing fatalities related to Covid-19.

His remarks came after it emerged Boris Johnson and the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, had received advice from scientists outside the official Sage group on Sunday, including Sweden’s chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, who devised the controversial approach to the pandemic. Unlike many other European nations, the country did not enter lockdown at the outset of the pandemic, keeping bars, restaurants and pubs open while most children remained at school. The country instead placed emphasis on personal responsibility to socially distance. However, some restrictions were introduced, including workers being advised to work from home if possible, a ban on gatherings of more than 50, and travel was restricted from outside the European Union.

Dr Scally said there had been a great deal of discussion about the Swedish model as a way of approaching the pandemic, but warned: “We’ve been concerned about this because we have noted the very different performance of Nordic countries: Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway. We are extremely concerned that that model may be given some credence.” He added: “We believe it is ineffective. Sweden has had an enormous number of deaths per head of population: 5,880 deaths, representing 580 deaths per million population. Compared to its neighbours it has been unsuccessful in preventing deaths. Finland, for example, has had exactly 343 deaths, which equals 62 deaths per million population.

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Forget about Trickle Down. This guy knew that 300 years ago.

Cantillon Effect 101 (Bloom)

With the recent money printing activity and an expanding wealth inequality problem, talk of the “Cantillon Effect” has taken center stage. But what is the Cantillon Effect and how does it work? Richard Cantillon was an Irish-French banker, philosopher, and economist born in the 1680s. His “Essay on the Nature of Commerce in General” is considered a foundational work in the study of the political economy, though it was not published until 1755, well after his death. While published 265 years ago, the essay has many insights that remain relevant today. He posited that the early recipients of new money entering an economy will enjoy a much higher standard of living than those it trickles down to. The “flow path” of new money matters! Let’s use a simple story to illustrate his point.

Imagine you live in a small, simple island society. One morning, you find a package has been delivered to your doorstep from your long lost Uncle FEDerico (who lives in a far away land). The package has $1 million in it. No one else knows you have received this package. You now secretly have $1 million. So naturally, you start spending it and investing it very quickly. Prices are still low, because no one knows these new dollars exist yet! Your standard of living improves rapidly. You buy yourself the nicest house, the most beautiful clothes, tons of land, and still have some money left over. But now, people are aware that new money is flowing through the system. Prices begin to rise as supply has yet to “catch up” to the new demand.


So while the money allowed you to invest, spend, and dramatically improve your lifestyle, it did not benefit others in the society in the same way. The sellers of the goods, who received your cash, now face rising prices when they want to consume.The flow path mattered! This is an ultra-simplified example, but gets at the essence of what the Cantillon Effect describes. Those receiving the new money injected in an economy first are generally much better off than those receiving it via the trickle down. This may lead to inequality.The Cantillon Effect is often discussed when examining the impact of “money printing” of Central Banks globally. With an injection point of the “new money” at the top, asset owners benefit while the working class may experiencing rising prices for everyday goods like food.

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Cantillon in present-day life.

Queen To Receive Government ‘Bailout’ To Top Up Income (Ind.)

Boris Johnson’s government has confirmed it will top up the Queen’s income following a significant slump in the Crown Estate’s revenue during the coronavirus crisis. The royal family takes in rental receipts from shops in London’s Regent Street, alongside malls and retail parks around the country – but the value of its portfolio has fallen by more than £500m since the pandemic hit. The Treasury said it would provide the estate with extra money to meet any shortfall in profits and make sure the Queen’s sovereign grant remains at its current level. “In the event of a reduction in the Crown Estate’s profits, the sovereign grant is set at the same level as the previous year,” a spokesperson said told The Independent.

“The revenue from the Crown Estate helps pay for our vital public services – over the last 10 years it has returned a total of £2.8bn to the Exchequer. The sovereign grant funds the official business of the monarchy, and does not provide a private income to any member of the royal family.” More details on the next sovereign grant are expected to be set out on Friday – but legislation governing the formula prevents the overall amount given to the Queen from ever being allowed to fall. Graham Smith, of the anti-monarchy campaign group Republic, described it as a “golden ratchet”, adding: “Once the grant goes up it can never come down, and the taxpayer loses out.”

Robert Palmer, the head of Tax Justice UK, added: “This royal bailout will be tough to stomach for people who love the Queen but have lost their jobs and businesses during the pandemic.” Any profits made by the Crown Estate are passed to the Treasury which, in turn, hands 25 per cent of the profits back to the Queen through the sovereign grant.

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Where would we be without hypocrisy?

The Difference Between ‘Villain’ Assange & ‘Intrepid’ Woodward (Camp)

Right now, one journalist, Julian Assange, is on trial while being held in a maximum security prison in London. Another journalist, Bob Woodward, is in a very different situation. The liberal Establishment is preparing to chisel his likeness out of a small boulder and display it next to the Lincoln Memorial. They love him because he got President Donald Trump to do interviews wherein Trump, as always, sounds like a lying buffoon. Among other things the president admits he knew Covid-19 was “deadly stuff” back in at least February, but played it down anyway. But this is nothing new. Every time Bob Woodward puts out a book, the mainstream media fan-girls all over him. Myriad kings and queens of televised logorrhea describe him as a “veteran reporter,” a “famed reporter,” or “synonymous with investigative journalism!”

So what’s the difference between liberal-hero journalist Bob Woodward and dastardly evil villain cannibal-pedophile Julian Assange (who Hillary Clinton famously said we should drone bomb)? Well, Julian is on trial for obtaining and disclosing classified information from the U.S. government. Liberal superhero Bob Woodward would never do such a thing like that! …Oh, that’s right. He actually said in his own online journalism class — “I have rarely found a significant story where there isn’t a document. …Often you can’t get it because it’s classified but… it’s there, and if you can get somebody to assist you, it will indeed help you with your story. …The hardest documents [to get] are intelligence documents. …And I’ve had them and printed them.”

Hmm, so the icon of investigative journalism actually brags about printing classified information. Well, maybe the difference between Assange (currently being fed to the lions) and Woodward (currently being lionized) is that Assange supposedly pressured people into giving him classified information whereas Woodward would never do that. For Bob the information just arrives at his door unsolicited.…Oh, wait a second. On video Woodward recently said, “Documents rarely just arrive in the mail out of the blue. …You have to go to human beings and say, ‘Will you give it to me?’ You say, ‘Come on, let’s talk. Let’s, uh, not be chickenshit about this.’” Soooo, the guy that has the entire mainstream media licking his shoes has been involved in obtaining and publishing classified information, and in fact pressuring sources into supplying him those documents?

Wow. Bob Woodward and Julian Assange are exactly the same except Assange has actually not been proven to have pressured sources into giving him documents. And there’s one other difference between the Almighty Bob Woodward and the so-called servant of Lucifer, Julian Assange. Nothing WikiLeaks has ever published has been proven false. Not one sentence. Whereas, the outlets Woodward works with like The Washington Post and The New York Times publish false information all the time.

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Simple question: who of you amongst our US readers would vote for Pelosi if she were the Democrat candidate?

Trump Will Only Leave Office If A Challenger Beats Him In Ritual Combat (BBee)

Clad in tribal furs and leather, President Trump shouted this morning that he will only transfer power if a challenger beats him in a one-on-one spear fight. Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, saying the only way to dethrone him would be for a challenger to beat him in ritual combat, per Wakandan tradition. The winner of the fight will receive the presidency and a cool suit that grants him super strength to go around the world and punch commies and stuff.


“It will not be a peaceful transfer of power,” Trump said. “It will instead be a fun, entertaining transfer of power, and that’s much more important. We can gather together all the tribal people and they can chant and bang their spears down and stuff. Totally tremendous and remarkable event. Really spectacular.” Biden then wandered up to Trump and said he’d challenge the president to a push-up contest. “I don’t even know who you are,” Trump growled. “Yeah, me neither,” Biden replied, wandering away again. “This is the way,” Trump concluded. He was then informed that was the wrong franchise.

Read more …

 

 

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Aug 142020
 
 August 14, 2020  Posted by at 12:35 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  11 Responses »


Egon Schiele Self-Portrait with Lowered Head 1912

 

 

Regular Automatic Earth guest writer Alexander Aston this time comes not from Zimbabwe, Cambridge or Greece, but from South Carolina, where he is on family business. And that’s where he’s venting his anger about. I’m pretty sure we would all benefit from doing more of that, get it all off our chests. I think maybe the main issue with it in the present day circumstances is you have to make sure it’s your anger, and not somebody else’s that you’re merely parroting.

I personally like Alexander’s notion of: “America, a Country For Old Men”.

 

 

 

Alexander Aston: Is there any more perfect metaphor for a society in terminal decline than the senescent Joe Biden? The U.S. election has boiled down to a choice between the authoritarian versions of Mr. Magoo and P.T. Barnum. Truly, “there’s a sucker born every minute” is a far more apropos motto for the country than E. Pluribus Unum. The Republicans have adopted a Christian Nationalism that identifies with a New York shyster that says all the shitty things they’ve been feeling for decades while blaming the least powerful. It’s always easier to kick down than punch up and moral courage is not a common trait.

Likewise, the Democrats smug self-satisfied conviction of ethical superiority and sense of entitlement to the votes of every women, brown person and leftist makes them not only insufferable but delusional. The DNC managed to crush the momentum and energy of one of the most significant left- wing grassroots movements in US history. They have demoralised a huge swath of the under-45 crowd and subverted an actual political vision (regardless of whether you agree with it or not) in favour of a man with an abysmal record and signs of growing cognitive impairment. The DNC platform offers zero substantive policy other than “not Trump” (a policy that’s going to have a very short honeymoon in the face of cascading systems failure).

The Democrats have made no concessions on even one important progressive/left issue. Now they have picked a morally bankrupt prosecutor who’s deeply entangled with the prison industrial complex at a time in which “defund the police” has coalesced into a key feature of American discourse. Yet, liberals seem completely shocked and aghast by the fact that there are large numbers of young folks, minorities and women that are unwilling to shut up and put up. The level of enthusiasm beyond the party faithful, for those still willing to vote Democrat, amounts to the ever inspiring “I’ll grit my teeth.”

 

Meanwhile, I know middle aged folks that have never voted in their lives who have signed up just to support Trump. In other words, they are motivated. Like it or lump it, that’s some of the real political complexity behind the vacuous narrative management of the MSM. On a national level, the American sense of reality is becoming more unhinged than a schizophrenic dropping acid after a weeklong meth binge. George Soros funded Antifa and Putin’s army of trolls are all monsters of the same fevered social imagination. On its current trajectory, the American Right will soon believe anyone to the left of Attila the Hun is a “far-left radical.”

Likewise, U.S. liberals will be left haunted and terrified by the spectre of Russian agents stealing their precious bodily fluids. Meanwhile, the virus will continue to rage, and corporate feudalism will further entrench itself as the benefits of imperial citizenship rapidly fade. The only thing that’s certain is that huge swaths of Americans still won’t actually understand what is happening to them and continue to blame the opposing factions of management, figments of their propaganda, the dispossessed and the marginalised. I don’t believe the specific outcome of the American election is all that relevant anymore.

The sad truth is that the United States is collapsing under the weight of a microscopic entity and its own systemic contradictions. The various narratives of what is happening and what it means to be an American have become so wildly divergent that there are multiple parallel realities operating in the United States. What’s frightening is how few realise the diversity and complexity of these various perspectives, fears and aspirations. Regardless of who wins the election, trust in the political legitimacy of the American system is being fatally undermined. If the margin of the election is close, it is guaranteed that one side will not accept the results.

 

If the election is swept, then the winning party will be saddled with a crisis of unparalleled proportions in the history of the country. Furthermore, neither party has the political vision nor competence to actually address the challenges that beset them. The U.S. would need leadership on par with a Lincoln or Aurelius to rescue the political system. Whoever is in power will rapidly face multiple and intersecting forms of systemic breakdown, resistance and noncompliance as the extent of the economic devastation becomes truly apparent.

The first part of the 2020’s will consist of material deprivation, civil unrest and increasingly robust challenges to the United States’ geostrategic position. The more that authoritarians try to exert control in a high entropy environment (robbing Peter to pay Paul), the faster the system will fall apart. Ultimately, I believe that the break-up of the United States is all but inevitable at present. What I hope is that it will be a relatively peaceful dissolution and reorganisation. What should terrify us all is the prospect of real violence as the various factions and coalitions jockey for power in the new reality. A few truly smooth brained idiots think that they just need to tool up and go mow down a few “liberal snowflakes” so that they can return to the 1950’s by Christmas.

 

A conflict in North America would be a clusterfuck that would make Syria’s civil war look like a game of checkers. Forget electoralism and eschew romantic notions of purification through violence. Build solidarity networks, figure out how to make your communities economically, socially and psychologically resilient. My suggestion would be that Mutualism, Libertarian Municipalism and Democratic Confederalism offer some good starting points for thinking about these things. I would recommend setting up a micro- factory in your community so that you can start manufacturing necessary tools and goods on a local level. Here are some freely available schematics: Civilization Starter Kit.

Try to appreciate the limitations of your own understanding so that you might be more compassionate towards others. Don’t blame people for having problems they don’t know how to fix, try helping them instead. Some things, once broken, cannot be mended. This is very true for societies. I sincerely wish you all the best of luck. Please be good to one another and defend those less powerful and fortunate than yourself.

P.S. If you are in a swing state you should follow your conscience, but it should be beneath any person’s dignity to vote for either party in their safe states. If you don’t understand how the American electoral system works at this point then shame on you, stop berating people for voting Green in Montana or Libertarian in California, they’re actually displaying some political acumen.

 

 

 

 

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